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CLEOPATRA’S DAUGHTER 


ROMANCE 

OF 

A BRANCH OF ROSES 


l©iHmm SErmjSttong 


AUTHOR OF •• THHKLA : A STORY OF VIENNESE MUSICAL LIFE ’ 



BOSTON 

DE WOLFE, FISKE & CO. 
1889 


Copyright, 1889, 

By CUPPLES AND HURD. 


All rights reserved. 


CLEOPATRA'S DAUGHTER 





CLEOPATRA’S DAUGHTER. 


CHAPTER I. 

^T^HE old Count de Tocqueville was yawning 
surreptitiously and making himself generally 
blasiy in a comfortable manner, in a comfortable 
fatitetiil in his niece’s box at the Court Theatre of 
Stuttgart, while the orchestra blared the noisy 
e7itracte music to the fi^iale of a version of Gothe’s 
“Gotz,” which, as he had just declared to his niece, 
the Countess Zaprony, had been written with the 
sole visible intent and purpose of so many produc- 
tions in his own language, that of making one half 
the world behave ill, in order that the other half 
might learn to behave well ; being about to add 
that so large a quota failed to apply the proffered 
example, when he observed that she was not 
paying the slightest attention to his remarks, and 
languidly proceeded to turn a small degree of 
curiosity and a monocle on the pension Kriiger- 
Schmidt, that blossomed and bobbed in the Frem- 


\ 


lO 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


den Loge^ where it improved its mind, or rather 
the instinct supplying that function, by becoming 
intensely interested, not in the play, as had been 
pecuniarily presupposed, but the double row of 
officers in the parterre, who deliberately surveyed 
their charms, together with those of the remainder 
of the house, in one comprehensive and stoical 
stare of military dignity. 

The bass drum, which, after the manner of bass 
drums in entracte music, had been working itself 
slowly but successfully into a state of musical 
epilepsy, prevented either occupant of the Zaprony 
box from noticing the entrance of two gentlemen, 
who stood for a moment in the shadow of the 
portiere. Then the elder, a tall, white-haired man 
of military bearing, advanced and extended his 
hand, with an amused twinkle of expectancy in 
his dark blue eyes, to the Countess, who recovered 
that animation just now so incontinently lacking, 
recalling de Tocqueville from the Kriiger-Schmidt 
pension and dismal broodings, by the delighted tone 
of her welcome. 

Ah ! Prince Waldemar, can I believe my 
eyes ? Where have you dropped from ? ” 

‘‘Just in by the Paris express, madam e, and 
being told at your palais that you were at the 
theatre, drove here, tres prompt^ to find you look- 
ing more charming than ever.” 


Cleopatra’s daughter. i i 

“ A compliment, actually a compliment, the first 
in, let me see — two weeks.? Yes; Zaprony left 
for Pesth two weeks ago, and the court has been 
at San Remo about as long, leaving me to vegetate 
with my devoted uncle. 

“And enmii!' put in de Tocqueville drily: “I 
assure you I have undergone all the complimentary 
snubbings of a fond husband or an aged relative, 
and am speechlessly enraptured to have a sharer of 
my bliss.” 

“Two,” responded Prince Waldemar smilingly. 

“ My nephew and namesake, Waldemar Dagger- 
hof, who, you remember, was engaged in mitrail- 
leuse diplomacy with the Turks when last you 
visited me at Petershof.” 

The young Russian advanced, and in response 
to a gesture of the Countess, seated himself in the 
fauteuil next her, replying with ready promptitude 
to her animated questionings regarding Paris soci- 
ety and the Salon’s latest picture. But he thought 
her infinitely more charming than any pictured 
grace he could recall, as she sat there framed in 
the dingy box of the old Court Theatre. The 
tawny red gold of her hair gathered back from a 
face that glowed with the faint pink of a sea shell, 
a face lit up by eyes the hue of a topaz, glinting 
and shadowing with every change of emotion, now 
shining with the veiled light of a tigress’s heavy 


2 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


with slumber, now deepening to the flickering 
shadow of a passing cloudlet upon a field of amber 
grain; a robe of light blue, misty with old lace, 
lent its soft folds to the full graceful lines of her 
figure ; while the hand, daintily gloved in gants de 
S?dde, that wielded a large Spanish fan, grasped 
at one moment the frail sticks with a nervous 
energy which threatened to snap them, and the 
next toyed with them gently, languorously, send- 
ing little whiffs of faintly perfumed air to where 
Waldemar Daggerhof sat in the shadow. 

Presently the curtain rose, and she turned her 
full attention to the stage, for Wolter, that great- 
est of tragediennes, played as gast the r61e of Ade- 
laide, and in the finale wrought one of those whirl- 
winds of passion and despair which awaken all 
the emotions of the human heart, running the 
gamut from shrill notes of joy through mellow 
bliss to deepest agony. Once a fragment of con- 
versation, which was carried on unceasingly by the 
Prince and de Tocqueville, came floating out be- 
tween the lines : “ I wonder that you rest content 
in this dull German town. You are changed. It 
cannot be that you are growing old. You are 
younger than I, and I — why, I feel myself in the 
prime of life. Maybe you are in love.? ” and the 
septuagenarian looked at the sexagenarian out of 
the corner of his eye, with a glance described in 
young people as roguish, in old ones leering. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


3 


“Why, my dear fellow, I grow younger, posi- 
tively younger every day. Do you know ” — here 
a breach was supplemented by a gurgle, which with 
bon viva7tts is apt to take the stead of genuine, but 
possibly less enjoyable, laughter — and then : “but 
nevertheless I am going to Africa. Yes, Africa. 
It will take me longer to get there, and conse- 
quently longer to get back than any place I can 
think of at present ; and as being en voyage seems 
to be the principal good to be got out of travelling 
nowadays, I shall have a surfeit.” 

When de Tocqueville had spoken of his depart- 
ure for Africa, Waldemar saw the Countess start a 
little and bend her fan tightly until the mother- 
of-pearl sticks snapped ; then she sank back list- 
lessly, returning her absorbed attention to the 
stage, no ruffle marring the placidity of her coun- 
tenance ; only her hands, which he had already 
learned as being more expressive of emotion than 
any feature but her eyes, still held the fan in ten- 
sity of grasp. How could the absence or presence 
of this wretched old worldling either affect or dis- 
turb her, he wondered. But idle surmise was 
quickly merged in intensity of interest that the 
scene upon the stage held for him. Adelaide, 
through her vile intrigue, having wrought the mur- 
der of her husband, is about to receive her dreadful 
retribution from the avenging band of the secret 


14 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

tribunal. Already at the portcullis is heard their 
quivering axe strokes. Her retainers flee in af- 
fright, hurling in blind terror from the lanced win- 
dows of the castle, to escape a fate feared as more 
relentless than jagged rocks and stifling waters of 
the moat. She laughs, then shrieks, and laughs 
again, as they creep slowly, slowly upon her. De- 
serted — alone — she feels herself woven in the 
net of a gigantic spider that nearer and nearer 
enfolds her in its choking, suffocating meshes, for- 
bidding all hope of succor. For a brief flash of 
overwrought suspense no sound breaks the still- 
ness but her chill, maniacal laughter, which grows, 
each peal, more ghastly and terrifying. The sweat 
of horror stands upon her brow, and lips that are 
frozen into rigidity by dread of an approaching 
doom refuse to frame themselves to utterance. 
Her eyes fixed, starting, with agony are set upon a 
vision palpable only to her blood-stained sight. A 
rope hurls through the air from the scarlet por- 
tiered way back of her, thrown by the masked 
avengers. Dragged backwards, backwards, shriek- 
ing, shivering, fainter and fainter, — a long, con- 
vulsive shudder, and death is kinder to her than 
life, for she can no longer think — and suffer. 

When the curtain fell, Waldemar turned away 
sighing, and with a start caught up again the 
threads of reality and life. Already de Tocqueville 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


5 


was placing the Countess’s sortie de bal about her 
shoulders with elaborate attention. He saw her 
face bent full upon the old man ; her eyes had 
grown almost black, and wore a look of terrified 
beseeching akin to agony. Her fan lay crushed 
upon the floor at his feet. He stooped to pick it 
up, ai)d, in rising, heard her say, “You must not 
go to Africa,” distinctly and with a tone of half- 
command, half-pleading entreaty, that evidently 
found poor vent in the brief words conventionality 
granted utterance. In a moment she had regained 
her usual mien, and they were gaily chatting under 
X.\iQ porte-cochbre next the palace while waiting for 
her carriage. The snow was falling thickly ; al- 
ready a goodly covering decked the all^e leading by 
the trellised palace gardens towards the AnlageUy 
while the great hollow square of the courtyard 
glimmered and paled through the eddying swirl of 
the snow flakes that danced, a wild company of 
ghosts, upon an ashen floor. 

“ A snow ! A snow !” cried the Countess gaily. 
“To think of a heavy snow in Stuttgart, and 
that, too, on the eve of Christmas Day which sees 
Zaprony home. We can drive in sledges to our 
supper party at Regolstein to-morrow night. You 
must join us; the horses shall be spanned troika 
fashion, three abreast, and we will muffle up in furs, 
and race, and chase, and fly as if we were on the 


1 6 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

steppes and the wolves were after us. You shall 
not deny me, Prince. You and your nephew must 
both be of the party.” 

“Far be it from me, Madame la Comtesse, to 
deny anything to a beautiful woman,” said the old 
chevalier, in a tone blending equal tinge of fatherly 
pride, by right of years, and flattered vanity at the 
complimentary eagerness evinced, — a phase of 
flattery which no man ever grows too old or too 
decrepit to appreciate from the lips of a woman, if 
she is beautiful, and does not happen to be his 
wife. 

Amid gay good nights and Christmas greetings 
the carriage disappeared in a whirl of snow flakes ; 
and arm in arm the two men, with furs tightly 
muffled, leisurely passed along the Schloss Platz 
towards Hotel Marquardt. The old castle across 
the square loomed up grave and dignified, beto- 
kening a repose that centuries alone can bring. 
Gleaming lights from out its quaint windows, set 
deep beneath a vast hood of snow-capped roof, 
presenting, through a shifting, vacillating haze, an 
ensemble strongly remindful of a huge and stately 
owl resting calmly serene amid a vast foam of bil- 
lowy waves. The twisted, interlacing skeletons of 
Virginia creeper festooned from tree to tree along 
the Platz swung burden of strange blossoming, 
while pine trees, faintly blackened, told the watch- 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 17 

ful presence of King Wilhelm’s monument, which 
made itself felt, rather than seen,— a faint, vapory 
column bearing aloft a brazen angel into the leaden 
air. 

Low and sepulchral, the Konigsbau stretched its 
vast colonnade to circling wreaths of snow flowers 
that twined in and out in playful masses, only to 
fall and rest a broad embankment upon the great 
flight of granite stairs beneath. Over all, above, 
below, a writhing, twisting, cloud-wrought serpent, 
coiling noiselessly, steadily downward without 
ceasing, giving fair promise of a world to-morrow 
blossoming forth in Christmas bravery. 

But to these Russians, accustomed to the gusts 
and waves of sleet which swept down the Newsky 
Prospekt like a cloud of scimitars, or the angry 
clash of Black Sea tempests dashing about the 
Golden Hag, a band of furies bent on death and 
desolation, this South German snow flurry seemed 
a very poor attempt of Nature, rather to be con- 
doned and treated with a kindly indifference, 
knowing that, for the climate, she had done her 
best. 

Yielding his furs to a footman, Waldemar en- 
tdl'ed his uncle’s salon, and lifting the chartreuse 
Jlacon from a l^q^le^Lr stand, to which the Prince had 
waived an invitation, dashed off a glass, and, sink- 
ing into the depths of a luxurious chair, stretched 


8 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


his long, muscular limbs towards the glowing grate, 
leisurely twisting cigarettes of Turkish tabac^ to 
watch their smoke, presently, in a long-sustained 
silence, as it curled and fainted away in the 
shadows of the high-ceiled room. 

“Uncle Daggerhof, tell me the history of the 
Countess Zaprony.” The Prince started, frown- 
ing slightly, aroused from a line of thought appar- 
ently more pleasant than reminiscence of the lady 
in question. 

boy! A beautiful woman should have 
no history. Her past holds her peccadillos, her 
future, age ; both of which we should help her to 
forget, that we may enjoy the sunshine of her pres- 
ent. When I was young, we thought too much of 
the living moment to link it with the dead.” 

“You forget, 7no7i Prince, that in this cycle we 
show our interest by vivisection, and try to prove 
that all the beauties held by that we worship owe 
their brilliancy, like the planets, to reflected light, 
— light cast by our own imagination.” 

“ Zounds I what are you driving at } One 
would think me the youth instead of you. This 
much I do know, and am thankful for, my inspira- 
tions and ideas were formed in an epoch when life 
— living, breathing, passionate life — flowed like an 
electric current through other lives, to bring to us 
the sweet, tingling sensation of being. We were 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


19 


not one and complete, around whom all things 
swung, like moons about a planet, but butterflies, 
fluttering in a garden, caring not for the name of 
the flower that suckled us, but only for the honey 
which it yielded.” 

‘‘ Maybe, as we live quicker, faster, at a wilder 
pace, we must live in the concrete, not the 
abstract. Every moment must be made to tell, 
and not looked back upon as yielding naught in 
actuality.” 

“Then you will find in the end that all has been 
in vain. Ignorant ignorance is unimpaired sense 
of enjoyment. Cherish that which comes, avoiding 
analyzation, questionings. I have lived long, ay, 
longer than my years ; but not yet long enough to 
question that which brought me joy,” added the 
old man scornfully, with sparkling eyes ; and a 
slight flush fainted in his cheek as he twirled the 
vodki glass in his long, slender fingers. 

For some moments he regarded silently the 
handsome, youthful face across the table, its dark 
beauty relieved of all Muscovite heaviness by flash- 
ing eyes, the heritage of an Alsatian mother, who, 
perhaps, had tempered in his blood the Russian 
fire with Rhenish phlegm. His brow was con- 
tracted, and a play of half-annoyed disappoint- 
ment fluttered about his lips as he puffed and 
puffed again, watching the cloud-wreaths thicken. 


20 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


Directly, feeling the gaze of his uncle, he turned 
upon him, his features relaxing in a winning 
smile that lit up every lineament with a sudden- 
ness which lent transfiguration. 

The Prince’s face softened, a look of affectionate 
pride crept into his eyes. 

“ Hein^ boy ! I believe you are disappointed at 
not hearing the history of Madame la Comtesse. 
Youth has now an odd way of evincing interest. 
It does not rave, but question. NHmporte, yuo 
shall have her story. But fill up your glass, that 
you may see, with your nineteenth century eyes, 
the glamour that envelops her in an old man’s 
brain. 

Cleopatra Varasov, the mother of Natalie 
Zaprony, was one of the most beautiful women at 
the court of Nikolas, called in foreign literature 
*The Cruel.’ She came as lady-in-waiting with 
the Grand-duchess Olga, when crowned by Wiirt- 
emberg her Queen. The little court had grace 
then. France had not yet grown ungenteel in the 
rabidness of her republicanism, nor Russia been 
inveigled and diplomatized away by poverty con- 
scienceless, thieving Prussia, who, now left 
alone, guards her with wary talons, hungry, but 
not ready , to assimilate. A widely different court 
was it then to now, when poor Queen Olga, with 
all her gentle grace, cannot prevent the horde of 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


21 


boorish German bumpkins from engulfing her with 
their gutturals and cabbages. 

“ Probably the less said of Cleopatra Varasov the 
better. Society forgave her much, for she was. 
very beautiful, and witty too, so that those who 
hated her face feared her tongue, and armistice 
was held. Napoleons, from Plrst to Third, took 
deepest interest in this little kingdom, which they 
founded, and were ever accused of wanting to steal 
by the high-minded Teutons of the north, who 
themselves longed to purloin her. 

“ On one of the many diplomatic missions under- 
taken from first to last to maintain the neutrality 
of the state, and prevent absorption by Prussia, 
came the young de Tocqueville, nephew of him 
you met to-night. Handsome, graceful, already a 
diplomat of trusted finesse^ it was small wonder 
that Natalie Varasov lost her heart to him. The 
mother, proving herself a still more wily strategist 
than the ambassador, trapped him a^ son-in-law, 
thus ridding herself of two considerable burdens — 
a pretty, portionless daughter and the surveillance 
of a pair of youthful eyes. The court of France 
was then the gayest of all Europe ; some said the 
most wicked. But then there is such widely dif- 
ferent opinion, that the heaven of one class will 
ever be the hell of another ; and I myself hold 
that, when my bones are laid genteelly away in the 


22 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


Daggerhof mausoleum, I shall feel amply satisfied 
if, in spirit, I can be translated to a second court of 
Eugenie. Ah ! nous verrons^ only at my age one 
should expect nothing. Well, cut adrift in this 
gay world, so largely, strangely new, with a past 
none too healthful in its school, Natalie de Tocque- 
ville preserved the purity and grace of some 
sweet flower, and bloomed but in the sunshine of 
her husband’s smile. 

For a time he responded to her affection, then 
the gay cosmopolite asserted dominance, and he 
treated her at first slightingly, then with open cold- 
ness and neglect, finally, gossip said, with cruelty. 
This much I do know, through all her trials and 
griefs she held -her own counsel and dignity with the 
heroism of a Spartan, or a true-hearted woman, 
and was ever an affectionate, devoted, and for- 
giving wife to as great a scamp as ever lived. 
Ciel^ being myself a good man, — late in life, I 
mean, — I am properly thankful that I evaded matri- 
mony, for I have ever observed that it is a lottery 
in which the blanks draw the prizes. 

‘'The deepest cloud upon poor Natalie’s horizon 
was a certain Princess de Saignon, herself one of 
the old noblesse. Wedded to the descendant of a 
creature of Napoleon the First, the culmination 
achieved which might have been easily prophesied. 
He was a vulgar, rough fellow, with but one 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


23 


passion and that for gold. She was a black-eyed, 
white-faced little woman, without a character of 
either hue, until de Tocqueville set the color — 
which you may imagine. 

“ De Saignon looked on quite calmly ; saw bad go 
to worse, and seemed to thrive. Madame dressed 
and jewelled more superbly ofttimes than the 
Empress herself, while Monsieur revelled in a 
riotous mhiage to which he was a stranger. 

The circle of knowing ones widened, until, at 
last, even Natalie must have been apprised. 
Whether the Empress would have quietly forbade 
de Saignon coming to court and stopped the scan- 
dal, or looked on in indifference, as she not un- 
frequently did, I know not. But at any rate, be- 
fore she had decided, through some unforeseen 
power, — I have heard it was a scornful scene be- 
tween the Countess de Tocqueville and the dog de 
Saignon, — he rescued what remnant of manhood 
remained to him, and challenged de Tocqueville, 
who was mortally wounded by a sabre stroke which 
cleft his skull. 

“Notwithstanding his behavior in the past, 
Madame his wife, when he was brought home to 
their hotel, nursed him day and night, — some said 
more from remorse at having hastened the finale, 
than devotion. But it seems to me that a deal of 
both would have been necessary to work such for- 
titude. 


24 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


“ De Tocqueville lay for weeks in a fever. Then, 
growing slowly better, was taken to the south of 
France, accompanied by Madame and the only 
living relative on either side of their unfortunate 
house. Count de Tocqueville, who never since has 
left her, and who evinces a devotion and constancy 
which he has failed to emulate towards any other 
human creature. 

“ Young de Tocqueville must have lingered some 
months, dying slowly. But the war cloud en- 
gulfed all so blackly, that I kept faint trace of their 
progression, hearing, finally, that he had died at a 
retired village in the north of Spain, and was quietly 
buried there instead of in the family mausoleum. 

Only a remnant of fortune remained to his 
widow, Madame de Saignon having been quite a 
patron saint of society, and Natalie, after some 
wandering, came back to the town that she had 
left seven years before, — twenty-five, a widow, and 
only the richer in experience, of a not altogether 
agreeable nature, than she was on her departure. 

“The Queen, not forgetful of her mother and 
their old friendship, showed her many kindnesses, 
and at last Madame de Tocqueville appeared at 
court, winning all hearts by her charming beauty 
and distinguished manners. She met Zaprony 
there when he was wandering about Europe on 
some errand or other for Milan of Servia, who was 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


25 


having a not very Olympian time, shortly after the 
assassination of his brother Michael and his own 
troublous accession. 

“ But the strange thing about it all is, that de 
Tocqueville and Zaprony are so strikingly alike 
in appearance, carriage, and bearing, that even I, 
who always expect what I cannot possibly expe- 
rience, by reason of prudential motives, almost 
had the breath knocked out of me from pure sur- 
prise, nay, I may say truthfully, affright, at sight 
of a mortal so singularly allied in looks to one I 
entertained the greatest pleasure in knowing no 
longer gifted with that doubtful blessing.” 

‘‘Did she evince no repugnance, no feeling, at 
this wonderful resemblance to one so singularly 
remindful of a ruined past and broken heart 

“ No ; that is the remarkable point in her case. 
From the first, I hear, she seemed magnetized, fas- 
cinated by Zaprony, who, fortunately, possesses all 
the good qualities which his predecessor in her 
affections so singularly lacked. She may have 
known this intuitively, or been densely ignorant ; I 
cannot pretend to understand. I only know that 
she is a very charming woman, and that, after all, 
you may regret your curiosity because of my 
garrulity.” 

“ No, I am only the more curious than before. 
Here asserts itself my nineteenth century vivi- 


26 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


section. Is she not changed, and how.? hardened 
or softened in the crucible through which the fates 
have dragged her .? ” 

“Of that I know nothing, neither do I care. 
She is a charming woman, as I have said, and that 
is enough, or ought to be, for any man. Women, 
like metaphysics, are best undisturbed. We are 
apt to return to the point that we left in our re- 
searches, with the additional dissatisfaction of not 
being pleased with what we have, because we fear 
we haven’t it.” 

Prince Daggerhof s reasonings might have satis- 
fied himself, but Waldemar would have deemed 
him an exceptional philosopher had such been 
the case. 

Was the Countess relentless, cruel, as those 
tawny eyes and nervous, clutching fingers shad- 
owed, or dreamy, loving, as the languorous, flitting 
smile that played about two red and perfect 
lips .? 

What was there between the old Count and her- 
self begetting fear and power, which held him near 
her still, when all that man’s devotion could inspire 
was hers.? What could that Mash Frenchman 
have in common with a niece-at-law, the one-time 
widow of a husband whose name and love had 
brought her but a broken heart and desolation .? 

It could hardly matter whether he rushed off to 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


27 


Africa or the Antipodes. Was not the strong 
arm of Zaprony might enough to keep all harm 
at bay ? 

But the longer he pondered, the longer became 
the list of his queries, until at last the snow flakes 
ceased from falling, and the moonlight flooded all 
the Platz. 



CHAPTER II. 

Frau Baronin von Pappenheim-Waggenheim 
seated herself in her salon with a sigh and an air 
of satisfaction. Not a speck of dust marred the 
glossy surface of the table squarely placed before 
the sofa which constituted her enthronement, or 
crept into faintest relief where the Christmas sun- 
shine lay in patches on the parquet floor ; while 
the pictures that hung crosswise in the four cor- 
ners of the room, and which might have been wor- 
shipped with impunity as representing nothing in 
heaven above, nor the earth beneath, neither the 
waters under the earth, glistened and blinked as if 
just freshly varnished. 

The business of getting rid of Christmas gifts, 
procured for children and servants, had been duti- 
fully gone* through with the night before. Like- 
wise the danger averted of Marie putting too much 
coffee and too little chicory in the Weihnachts 
fruhstuck^ so that absolutely nothing remained to 
demand her attention until the dinner summons. 

Frau Baronin had sent her three youngest 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


29 


daughters, together with their governess, to the 
English chapel, more as a matter of intellectual, 
than religious propagation. For her friend and 
dreaded oracle, the Count de Tocqueville, a much- 
feared, satirical, but admired authority, had de- 
clared in her hearing, with frequent repetition, 
that the only English cosmopolite was William 
Shakespeare, and he had never left his island ; 
forcing thus upon her comprehension, by gradual 
process, the conclusive deduction that a class re- 
taining so rigidly the manners and customs of their 
ancestors might be well studied, like other curi- 
osities of natural history, where they were wont to 
congregate in large numbers. And to this purpose 
she often sent her family for amusement, and pos- 
sible enlargement of vision, to St. Catherine’s in 
the Olga Strasse. 

The two eldest von Pappenheim-Waggenheims 
were still in bed, by maternal mandate. They 
were, both of them, strong, healthy girls, with very 
red cheeks, silky, yellow hair, and a strong incli- 
nation to what their mother called ^^emponge- 
bonge!' Being, indeed, quite equal, constitutionally, 
to the effort undertaken by their juvenile relatives, 
whom, had the smallest consideration been shown 
their individual tastes, they would most gladly 
have accompanied in pursuit of anthropology ; but 
possessing a fatal tendency to fall asleep at the 


30 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

preposterous hour of nine, which cle Tocqueville 
emphatically declared the early afternoon, they 
had been ordered in bed to become glutted with 
sleep, that by no possible mischance they might 
happen to grow unconscious, from lack of brain 
rest, at a supper party to which they had been 
bidden for that evening by the Countess Zaprony. 

In years past. Baroness von Pappenheim-Wag- 
genheim had proved herself a loyal friend to Cleo- 
patra Varasov, although not by any means intel- 
lectually her equal, affording, in the early and in- 
deed most stages of their acquaintance, more 
amusement than companionship. 

La belle Russe had been touched, and perhaps 
rendered momentarily less cynical because of the 
woman’s simple, confiding faithfulness, which she 
was wont in other, and, after her own reckoning, 
clearer moments, to classify as the instinctive at- 
tachment of animals to intelligent beings. But 
she nevertheless rewarded her, in a fashion, by not 
flirting with the Baron. 

Whatever Cleopatra Varasov’s opinion might 
have been regarding the Baroness’s intellectual 
status, Natalie remembered, quite vividly, that her 
mother’s social one had been rendered high service 
by the woman who saw, though most assuredly 
from mental rather than moral obliquity of vision, 
the good and not the bad. So that, on returning 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 3 1 

tG Stuttgart and finding Baroness von Pappen- 
heim-Waggenheim a widow, and the mother of 
five daughters whose marriageable qualities were 
what the French would term difficile^ did what she 
could to mitigate her lot, and help her to a display 
of her wares. 

While the Baroness sat thus enthroned upon 
her canapky gazing about in comfortable abstrac- 
tion, not being given to actual thought, her eyes 
fell upon the equipage of Count de Tocqueville 
rolling along the snow-covered roadway of the 
Neckar Strasse. There was no possible mistaking 
of its identity, — that glossy coup^, bearing an indi- 
vidual air equal with that of its possessor, whose 
own crest embellished the door panel, while below, 
interwoven with quaint arabesque, was the motto of 
Albio7i perfide^ which he seriously declared the 
only good thing he had found in England, and, con- 
sequently, brought home, — Honi soit qui mal y 
pense ^ — a motto that, fortunately for his friends, was 
not possible of literal enforcement. For, owing to 
the vicarity of his general progress upon the high- 
way of life, the observation could only have been 
observed in the lack of it. 

The Baroness had barely time to darken her 
salon, de Tocqueville having informed her that he 
detested light in a raw state, and compose herself in 
a chair where she could comfortably escape those 


32 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


satirically inquisitive side glances to which he was 
prone, when he was decorously announced by the 
little maid, to be, on her part, decorously received 
with surprise and delight. 

“My dear Count, to what good fortune do I 
owe this early call } ” She herself counted high 
noon in its proper relegation, and the most fitting 
time of the day to visit, but when in the company 
of one whose worldliness, from commanding her 
admiration, demanded her emulation, carefully en- 
deavoured mildly to reflect him. 

“I am, as usual, suffering from ennui; it is 
either that or migraine , you know.” 

“And you came to me to be amused How 
flattering.” 

“I came to amuse myself,” was the singularly 
prompt reply, received in perfect good faith and 
consequent equanimity, which, possibly, had she 
known what was in store, might not have been so 
stolid. 

“ I have scarcely seen you since Madame von 
Taubenheim’s lovely reception. Count.” 

“ No. I have been slowly convalescing from the 
shock. You call that a reception in Germany, do 
you } I was at a loss for proper classification. But 
if you have found the correct, I will venture that 
it was a very chilly one, sending me home, at my 
time of life, with a stomach frozen, literally frozen, 
with ices, and very indifferent ones at that.” 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


33 


“ But she had such delicious honey cakes and — 
music,” put in the Baroness reflectively, not find, 
ing anything else to add. 

“In France,” retorted the Count, — adopting much 
the same tone with which he would have announced 
“in Heaven” — “the inhabitants, at a certain age, 
I mean in genteel circles, are not supposed to 
possess any teeth, or at least those of a rhinoceros ; 
and, when they undertake to entertain their friends, 
try to make them forget the fact, instead of, ap- 
parently, inviting them for the express purpose of 
its discovery, by employing a chef to cook the food 
they offer, not serve it raw like the English, nor 
yet as they do here, hardened to the consistency 
of stone, and then disguised in some fatty sub- 
stance, — to prevent choking, quite possibly.” 

Had the Baroness been other, she would most 
certainly have asked him why he wandered away 
from such a culinary paradise into outer darkness 
and gnashing of teeth, or rather gums ; but being 
one of those unhappy mortals who are always 
either temporizing or appeasingly apologetic, never 
succeeded in satisfying, or rather quieting, the un- 
satisfiable. “ I had quite hoped that General von 
Schweinitz had entertained you hugely, and the 
darling old Madame von Brummelstein.” 

“Oh! I had quite forgotten them. Yes, they 
did amuse me intensely, but seemed not to appre- 


I 


34 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

ciate my entertainment. I won fifteen marks at 
Seeks tind Sechzig from the two — combined — 
fifteen shillings, eighteen francs, fifty centimes, 
only think of it, and threw them both into a rage 
that threatened apoplexy. I can see the ‘ darling ’ 
von Brummelstein’s cap-strings bobbing with rage 
now, and I don’t doubt but von Schweinitz walked 
home to retrieve himself from ruin and a fiacre 
fare.” 

“ I am glad, for your sake and my daughters’, 
that the court will return from San Remo with the 
earliest mild weather. It will be other then, more 
exciting.” 

“ Pray, madame, I beg of you, don’t class me 
with babes and sucklings. The wonderful sensa- 
tion of again beholding the few sprigs of nobility 
not obliged to eke out an existence on military in- 
finitessimi, parading around on the Schloss Platz 
to the crash of horns, all screaming and blaring at 
once, a la Wagner, may be bliss untold to them, 
but hardly satisfying to a nature slightly maturer, 
and of the opposite sex.” 

“ But,” continued the Baroness, still appeasing 
and apologetic, serenely good humored or indiffer- 
ent, and, most probably, not even deducting the 
possible though doubtfully implied compliment 
contained in his last words, that female Wiirttem- 
berg abroad was not to be reckoned with female 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


35 


Wiirttemberg at home, ‘‘but think of the morn- 
ing concerts, the Hof balls, everything — maybe,” 
wishing to be literal and consequently truthful. 

“Only a repetition of what Madame von Tau- 
benheim gave us, on a larger scale, a grand and 
thorough soirh glack^ with the men on one side of 
the salon, the women on the other, as they do at 
the Stifts Kirchcy — not that I was ever there, del 
forbid, — and, as they do not do, the old people of 
both sexes chased off into some stuffy corner, like 
a kind of neuter gender,, and put to playing 
cards.” 

“ But, Count, our Hof fHes are charming. We 
really never had anything to liken them at the 
ducal court of Seidlitz-Pfefferingen, where I was 
brought out, — nothing, not even when Her Grace 
Marie Sophia married the reigning Prince of Saxe- 
Armenhaus.” 

Mon Dieti^ I trust not. But there is one, yes, 
one^ of those solemn riots which I can mentally 
record with actual gratification.” 

“You mean Xho. grossartige,poesievolle fest \^h\ch 
took place when the Princess Vera came on from 
Russia and married poor Eugene, ach Gott! How 
lovely that was ! ” 

“ No, I was spared the event. I refer to that 
diner at which the near-sighted old Princess 
Gisela of Bavaria, mistaking the King for his 


36 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

bite noire and cousin, the Crown Prince, told him in 
hearing of half the company that she hoped her 
dinner had not poisoned her, and trusted to find 
him celebrating his accession with a cook, the next 
time she came that way.” 

“Have you ^nigraine^ Count asked the Bar- 
oness, with such evident innocence and sincerity 
that he was charmed into genuine laughter at the 
unconscious satire of her query, charmed into 
making himself agreeable, as he so thoroughly 
knew how. 

Leaving her in a quietly contented frame of 
mind, secure in the belief that he had given her 
some valuable hints as to the management of her 
most troublesome affairs temporal — her daughters, 
who, had de Tocqueville held the exclusive direc- 
tion of their careers, would have been quite un- 
likely to settle down economical hans Frans, as 
their mother’s fondest ambition intended. 

However, forgetful of past, and, it must be ac- 
knowledged, unrealized hopes, which her sanguine 
French friend had awakened, the general bent of 
his sophisticated conversation left her in a serene 
and subduedly joyful condition, further ensan- 
guined on entering her cheerily heated dressing- 
room at Regolstein, after an exciting trofka race, 
which to her had not been exciting, by the fact 
that Marie and Sophia displayed no unusual sleepi- 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


37 


ness, while she herself had found two very crooked 
pins upon the stairway, which, pray kind Heaven, 
might mean a husband apiece for them. 

Prince Daggerhof and his nephew Waldemar, 
two of the most eligible noblemen of Europe, were 
in full sight, and, but for the sweet prophecy of the 
pins, would have been sadly regarded, as so many 
others before them, with the hopeless aggravation 
in which a keen-eyed sportsman views a covey of 
birds whirr up from the grassy meadow, no means 
at hand to quell their flight. This good omen, 
however, had set just such fond emotions welling 
as once filled the breast of her ambitious grand- 
mother, — emotions not supported on crooked pins, 
but a minuet de la cotir danced by the elder Dag- 
gerhof with her own direct ancestress at a ducal 
Seidlitz-Pfefferingen ball. This pre-existing fact 
was, of course, unknown, and, most properly, 
would not have been considered if it had, for men, 
rich ones, are all regarded as eligible until their 
skeletons are securely articulated. 

Ignorant that history was repeating itself, Prince 
Daggerhof, together with the other men of the 
party, was enjoying vodki punch in Zaprony’s 
library ; and directly, finding himself alone with 
his host, the twain fell to talking, as reunited 
friends are wont, of what the years had brought 
them. 


38 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


You may imagine, mon Prince^ that life, to me, 
is one long peal of happiness with such a woman 
as Madame. She grows every day brighter and 
more charming. At first, after our marriage, she 
was given to moments of melancholy, alternated 
with nervous excitement, and insomnia, that baffled 
all medical skill; being affected as she was at 
Petershof, on an occasion of which you know, 
when no one but de Tocqueville seemed able to 
compose her. Now, however, these attacks occur 
only at long intervals, and then when some 
object or circumstance recalls especially to mind 
an unhappy past, which it is my greatest joy to 
help her forget.” 

“ Dear Natalushka,” said the elder man, resting 
his hand for a moment upon the other’s arm, “ I 
am glad that she has found so safe a haven.” Then, 
after a little silence, “ Y ou have a royal place, 
this Regolstein.” 

Which you have had the selfishness never to 
grace before.” 

“ How can you expect a Russian to leave Paris, 
until he is obliged, even for Heaven.? Though 
Paris, now, is not the Paris of the past, a fact 
which renders absence a possibility, and a very 
enjoyable one at that, when spent with such kind 
friends. But I had seldom found you here. Not .? 
You were at Rome. I heard of you at Cairo, St. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 39 

Petersburg, Teheran, every place, though never 
Paris.” 

No ; Paris, even the borderlands of France, are 
swept from Natalushka’s present, as I would to 
God they had been from her past. I had wanted 
to go there — soon after our marriage it was — but 
the bare prospect of the journey seemed to fill her 
with such actual agony that the proposition has 
never since been broached. Part of the time we 
are at Zaprony ; again, at Vienna ; two years ago 
we spent the winter at San Remo, to be near 
Queen Olga, to whom Madame is devotedly 
attached, and who is the cause of our frequent 
presence here. But of late we have abandoned the 
Italian winters, travelling elsewhere.” 

‘‘To my joy and intense relief,” said de Tocque- 
ville, entering in time to hear the Count’s last 
words. “I can endure the court at Friedrichs- 
hafen, for the air of the lake makes me sleep most 
of the time ; and in stray moments of sensibility I 
can pay my hoinmages to the Empress Eugenie 
at Marienburg, and be amused by Madame, her 
lady in waiting, who has preserved her wit, if she 
has not her hair, and thus exist. But the fleeting 
moments which we spend there in summer, and 
here in winter, are, after all, possibly a moral edi- 
fication, for they strengthen me in comforting as- 
surances regarding my future state.” 


40 


Cleopatra’s daughter; 


“ Because that will be so much more exaspera- 
ting ? ” queried the Prince, helping himself to 
punch. 

“ Far from it, but because I have lived, not with- 
out extracting amusement, in places with all the 
afflictions, though none of the advantages, and con- 
sequently comparing poorly with — Plutonia.” 

“ My dear Count, did you for a moment suppose 
that I had relegated you to such a fate ? ” inquired 
the Prince laughingly. 

“ Was it not the most likely deduction for any 
of us to draw from the fiat of a friend } ” re- 
queried the Count, turning for a final sotipqon of 
vodki before responding to the Countess Zaprony’s 
message, just announced by a footman, that the 
ladies awaited them in the state salon. 

Waldemar Daggerhof was standing in the 
shadow of a friendly portihe^ whence he had 
escaped various laboriously unskilful attempts on 
the part of Madame von Pappenheim-Waggenheim 
to fasten his attention upon her morphean treas- 
ures, when his uncle, together with Zaprony, ad- 
vanced to where the Countess formed the centre 
of an animated group. Singularly beautiful she 
looked to him that night, clad in a robe of won- 
drous, sheeny, cream brocade, from old Venetian 
loom, its stiff magnificence caught into rich folds 
by a loose, low-falling girdle of wrought silver. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 41 

blossoming in quaint arabesque of Saracenic lore. 
A fan of trailing ostrich plumes waved softly in 
her nervous grasp, or mingled with the rose rift in 
her cheeks, that had taken an unwonted glow 
from the keen air without. The red gold of her 
hair swept high upon her head, to fall in little 
clustering curls that faintly touched her brow, 
outlined in clear reflection by the dim tapestries, 
which rayed in faded colors from less sombre 
shadows. Silver standards, bearing the imprint of 
some rifled sanctuary treasury, held aloft a cloud 
of waxen tapers that lost their far-straying beams 
in the armorial knot and tracery which mingled 
overhead, breathing in quiet shadow the perfume 
straying to them in a dim past from the hand of 
a Verbruggen or a Van der Voort. 

Later, as she moved among her guests, he 
noticed, betrayed so eloquently, even in the hand 
that rested in such perfect quiet upon Zaprony’s 
arm, the full confidence and sense of faith with 
which his strength inspired her, — Faith, looking 
proudly into his dark eyes, to see only the reflec- 
tion of her own that so filled his heart. 

Waldemar, standing there in the shadow, 
echoed, all unconsciously, that thought to which 
his uncle had just now given utterance : Nata- 
lushka has indeed found a safe haven in her 
knight’s strong arms after a stormy day. 


42 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


Les Sirenes was floating dreamily, lazily, through 
the sweet-scented air that held the breath of crim- 
son roses and white lilacs ; Les Sirenes, languorous 
and sighing, like blossoms weary of their own per- 
fume in the sultry summer night. 

Waldemar turned away, sighing also, to the 
little Russian assigned him to escort to the supper- 
room. A mood was upon him that proved effort to 
shake loose from, — a mood that he would gladly 
have given its bent behind the portiered tapes- 
tries, rather than escort a nineteenth -century mad- 
emoiselle to Chablis and oysters, even though they 
should happen to be served, as now, in an apart- 
ment hung about with silk of flame and cream, 
in semblance of a Turkish tent, which domed above 
a table where rare Venetian glass vied with rare 
plate, and strawberry kissed cheek with peach and 
grape beneath the mellow glow — Allans! moods 
in youth are not the flxed convictions that they are 
in age, and the brilliant atmosphere and conversa- 
tion of the supper-room soon banished foreign 
shadows. 

Even de Tocqueville seemed to forget himself 
between the courses, and relax into genuine enjoy- 
ment, which may, after all, have been only a direct 
result, but a result evidently heightened by the 
chatter of a wicked-looking old lady with a daz- 
zlingly white complexion and very arched eye- 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


43 


brows. As a noted critic of Vienna remarked to 
the dame next him, who herself remarked nothing, 
that Madame la Comtesse knew just what people 
to bring together, at once illustrating an uncon- 
scious satire, and quite amply proving the truth of 
the assertion ; for his sole talent was to talk and 
hers to eat, which, as the niemi was superb, she 
could do with equanimity, and consequently afford 
him uninterrupted silence. Later, after coffee 
and cigarettes, — just how it happened no one 
rightly knew, as is so often noted in gay company 
without intent, — they found themselves following 
their hostess, whose laughing challenge to reach 
the Rosen Garten first, echoed mistily through 
lofty halls, heavy with plaster nymph and ara- 
besque in florid rococo tracery, harboring wealth 
of shadow, faintly lessened by the flickering rays 
of an antique lamp, held aloft, a guiding beacon, 
as they sped on, on, through dusky passages, into a 
portion of the castle left untouched when dedi- 
cated by the present owner to the service of his 
countess, whose white draperies glinted reflectant 
in uncertain flashes as she waved the light in gay 
defiance above her head, on reaching finally a 
massive door that opened upon a salon which, 
tradition said, had seen the tragic ending of a 
traitor prince, whose life-blood left deep tracings 
in the heart of the oaken floor. 


44 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


But tradition received faint heeding : the stains ' 
were there, and might, or might not, be blood ; 
though, in a pile that had, God wot how many 
years, seen life’s dawn fade into the quiet night 
of sleep, it would have proved small wonder if, 
with some, the twilight had been hastened. 

Natalie only knew that, beyond, her Rose^i Gar- 
ten^ gay in winter’s feathery blossomings, swept 
down to the very terrace railing, overlooking dizzy 
heights, from which tradition, always accurate, 
had chronicled the traitor’s body flung, — dizzy 
heights that lent themselves as watch-tower to the 
pictured scenery beyond, gleaming a proud attrac- 
tion in the castle’s varied treasury. 

Zaprony hastened, laughingly, to fling aside the 
barrier of the door that she might enter ; while de 
Tocqueville, whose French gayety for once had 
sustained the banishment of ennui^ pressed close 
at hand. 

But the panels proved stubbornly unyielding. 
Both men bore heavily; then suddenly, with jar- 
ring, grating sound, the hasps flew wide apart, 
causing her to laugh a triumphant peal as she held 
the flaring light aloft, — a peal that choked into 
a startled shriek in mid-career. A great Venetian 
mirror, which hung between two low-swung win- 
dows, had fallen to the floor with deafening crash, 
but not before the Countess had seen the faces 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


45 


of her husband and de Tocqueville in quivering 
reflection that shot down through trailing black- 
ness to mingle with moonbeams, gleaming mistily 
above an inky shadow. 



CPI AFTER III. 

Lieutenant Kurd von Palm left the Reitef 
Kaserne and slowly traced his way up the Lud- 
wigsburger Strasse in rather an unenviable frame of 
mind. IPis head was heavy, and his pocket corre- 
spondingly light, from the combined result of wine 
and roulette, with which the holiday festivities had 
been properly and appropriately inaugurated. 

The former delinquency was, unfortunately for 
Kurd, rather a nocturnal affair. But the roulette, 
at least at the mad rate which had distinguished 
it the previous evening, was not, although it took 
very much more of the former, it must be honestly 
confessed, than the latter to bring about that 
feeling of exaltative indifference which prompted 
him to believe that he must be enjoying himself, — 
a fact which in no wise either greatly increased or 
diminished his usual quiet, phlegmatic repose of 
feature beyond a slight flush of countenance, that, 
after all, may have rather added than detracted, 
because of a certain fictitious animation it lent to 
a physiognomy assuredly the reverse. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


47 


Indeed, from a personal point of view, whatever 
unpleasantness of mood under which he might 
now be laboring was entirely attributable to the 
roulette board. A gratuity of fourteen hundred 
marks, which the German government can ill afford 
to present as annual douceur to the lower com- 
manding grade of its mainstay and countenance, 
will buy quite a great deal of vm ordinaire but 
very little roulette, even when played with that 
frugality of mind which distinguishes all personally 
defrayed Teutonic amusement. 

Kurd’s father, having enjoyed to the full a for- 
tune that his wife, the daughter of an ambitious 
and well-to-do fabiikanty had brought him, retired 
from a scene in which his personal deportment had 
been none too commendable, in affairs other than 
roulette and wine, though equally undomestic, leav- 
ing his heart’s partner the poorer, from a pecuniary 
point of view, than the privilege of an advanced 
social position exactly warranted. 

But she, being an exemplary person, rather from 
lack than possession of understanding, and feel- 
ing her latter end at hand, built an admirable 
mausoleum to contain the bones of her husband, 
and incidentally her own, — a proceeding doubt- 
less fraught with certain satisfactory positiveness, 
yielding comfortable conviction that now, at least, 
she could rest assured of the exact whereabouts 


48 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


of her rightful protector, a fact which in life had 
been singularly denied her. 

Careful harvesting of mausoleumic remnants 
revealed, to their joint heir, the knowledge that 
barely enough remained for mess-bills and uni- 
forms, leaving what de Tocqueville designated as 
“ military infinitessimi ” to be dedicated on the 
shrine of personal elevation, with a result already 
chronicled. 

Perhaps, however, a conversation that he had just 
held with his friend. Captain von Riider, somewhat 
augmented in extent these elevatory after-effects, 
and added to an already perturbed condition. 

Feeling the contracted horizon of his joys pecu- 
niary, von Riider, consequent upon a decidedly 
severe and protracted struggle, had concluded to 
lay his heart, and a presentation at court, at the 
feet of Fraulein Katrina Scheidermantel, whose 
father had already earnestly, nay, pressingly indi- 
cated, that the necessary dot^ including even the 
number of linen required by a patriarchal govern- 
ment for its favored children, was at his command 
and disposal, in consideration of an equivalent 
responsibility, not embraced until debts, as long 
as the arm of the law, threatened a culmination 
even more disagreeable than matrimony; which 
alternative was only accepted when a parent, 
throughout so broadly and generously disposed, 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 49 

had agreed, on the indifferent inference that his 
child would be accordingly tolerated, to appease 
the maw of past extravagance. 

Furthermore, feeling, as is proverbially acknowl- 
edged, anxious for a partner in his woes, Fraulein 
Katrina not being considered, the amiable captain 
had endeavored by rhetoric most eloquently per- 
suasive, though personally accepted with reluc- 
tance, to convince Kurd that a like loving bond 
would be most appropriate to one, though poor 
in means and years, with hereditary talent far 
beyond both. But Kurd was of a different tem- 
perament from the ancestor whose doubtful talents 
he had somewhat inherited, possessing also, in a 
degree, the theoretically romantic German dispo- 
sition of his mother, which reluctantly allowed 
a change of life whose responsibilities and trials 
had set with butterfly lightness upon his translated 
progenitor. 

Still more, there was, as is sometimes the wont of 
youth, a strong and conclusive reason, attributable 
^ to that mentally youthful organ, the heart, a prior 
attachment, — an attachment where dots and linen 
garments could, alas ! form no conclusive reason- 
ing; the bright object of his pastoral being none, 
other than Joseffa von Pappenheim-Waggenheim, 
the fourth daughter of the redoubtable Baroness, 
and his own cousin, whose pecuniary attractions 


50 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


were strikingly limited, owing to a line of ances- 
tors of remarkably aggravated “von Riideric ” 
proclivities, who transmitted naught but the only 
undisposable article at their command, a name, 
and that quite incidentally, as a result of full value 
received, to be similarly acted upon, or not, as 
descendent fancy might dictate. 

It was with thoughts of Joseffa in his somewhat 
perturbed brain that Kurd wended his steps 
toward the lower Anlagen in preference to the 
Konigs Strasse, where already a number of brother 
officers were bravely displaying personal attractions 
with various aim. 

He had traversed by-paths and skirted shrub- 
beries until, at last, Rosenstein with its severe 
facade swept near at hand ; and there, signal- 
ling him gayly with her handkerchief from just 
within the railing, was the object of his thoughts, 
together with her two sisters and Fraulein Putz, 
their near-sighted but indefatigable governess. 

“ Come, Kurd, come ! What do you think } 
Fraulein Putz’s cousin is on duty here to-day, and 
he will let us all in for nothing.” 

“To Wilhelma too, and you can come with 
us ! ” put in the other sisters in unison. “ We’ve 
been coming, oh ! ever so often, hoping he might 
happen to be here, and never found him until 
to-day.” 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


5 


“My charges, the demoiselles,” asserted Fraulein 
Putz, “are to-day to be admitted, without pecuniary 
equivalent, on the part of my relative, who, know- 
ing the thirst for the beautiful which animates 
them, shrinks from the necessary form, which I 
pray the Herr Lieutenant will not mention, as the 
Ohersthofineister is particular about tickets.” 

Kurd gravely acquiesced with his stateliest mil- 
itary salute, well aware that those same motives 
of economy which actuated a kingly government 
to charge fifty pfejinige to view its treasures, 
caused Fraulein Putz to refrain from paying the 
same, that her own might view them, “ my cousin ” 
being immediately and unexpectedly rewarded for 
his artistic disinterestedness from Kurd’s alarm- 
ingly meagre private collection ; and together the 
little party entered to inspect the Cupids, Dianas, 
and Junos placed there by a former sovereign, 
whose admiration for Oriental customs and Occi- 
dental art had frequently embarrassed himself and 
others intimately concerned. 

“How is mamma to-day.^” questioned Kurd, 
who, together with Joseffa, had loitered somewhat 
in advance of the remainder of the party, more 
from mutual enjoyment in each other’s society 
than a lack of appreciation for Rosetti’s Esmer- 
alda teaching her goat to read, which, from the 
ecstatic “ Ach’s ! ” coming faintly to them through 


52 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


deserted corridors, had won a place in the youth- 
ful von Pappenheim-Waggenheim estimation not 
even accorded Gegenbaur’s Olympus. 

“How is mamma to-day.^” echoed Joseffa 
abstractedly, having heard his query, but first pal- 
pably realized on repetition; her thoughts being 
at that moment — just where, she felt uncertain, 
until all doubt as to their focus being her maternal 
relative was positively made evident. 

“ I don’t know ; oh, yes ! — how stupid of me ! — 
quite well. She is always well, you know, like the 
rest of us. But Madame la Comtesse Zaprony is 
very ill, and she drove out to see her just before we 
left. She wanted Marie and Sophia to go too ; but 
they have been asleep for a day or two, — indeed, 
ever since the supper party at Regolstein.” 

“And Fraulein Putz improved the opportunity 
by improving your minds. But here I am, a weight 
and hindrance generally. Suppose I leave you ? ” 
he added in a moment of forgetful unselfishness, 
which would have been assuredly regretted had 
her reply been other. 

“ I cannot well see why. We have the whole 
afternoon, and you are more capable than Fraulein 
Putz to tell me all about the pictures and things. 
You have seen them ever so often — haven’t 
you } ” 

“ Let us sit down here,” he proposed by way 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


53 


of answer; and then, preparatory to improving her 
mind, “ I have wanted to talk with you for ever so 
long, but it seems that we can never get together 
alone. Do you remember what lovely talks we 
used to have when I got off from cadet school on 
leave, and came to Pappenheim ? ” 

“And how you made me cry — running your 
sword through my best bonnet, to show how 
sharp it was.? Of course I do. Would any girl 
be likely to forget that .? ” . 

A vague surprise filled him. The Joseffa of old 
was hardly capable of evading so skilfully a direct 
question. Then he suddenly remembered that 
maybe the Kurd of old would not have angled for 
the possible answer which he had awaited. He 
ventured again : “ Do you know, I was enraged 
beyond anything at having to walk with Charlotte 
and Fraulein Putz all the way from Saint Cath- 
erine’s to the Neckar Strasse on Christmas Day, 
after waiting around the entire morning to take 
you down to the Schloss Platz for the music .? ” 

“I am sure,” with great moral tendency of tone, 
“that it was very selfish of you not to take us then, 
when we should all have enjoyed it so much.” 

“But I should not,” was the manly reply. “Two 
more squares of Fraulein Putz would have been 
the death of me.” Then they both laughed, and 
a general feeling of mutual fellowship became 


54 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


momentarily established — an establishment to be 
ruthlessly destroyed by his masculine lack of tact 
in a very short space of time. 

“ If you had not been so mean, and had walked 
with me, instead of behind me to make sport of our 
combined appearance the entire way, I would have 
gone to Ludwigsburg to hear the music.” A very 
strong assertion, as Ludwigsburg was nine miles 
distant, and the native music of an extremely 
indifferent, cavalry description. 

It would have been highly improper for me to 
present myself upon the Schloss Platz with a young 
man,” was the haughty and severe response. 

“I am sure Fraulein Putz was with us.” 

She was with j/ou” came the response, ren- 
dered in a significance of tone and feminine 
conclusiveness which forbade a prolongation, and 
consequent allowance that Charlotte, who was 
older than herself, had also been of the immediate 
trio. 

“ It is very silly of you to act as if you were 
grown up,” was the masculine assertion, forget- 
ful of both circumstances, that he had been 
endeavoring to prove the fact to her for a good 
thirty minutes, and that Charlotte had borne 
the brunt of conversation on the occasion under 
discussion. 

may deem it silly,” was the response, 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


55 


delivered with accumulated von Pappenheim- 
Waggenheim dignity, '‘but / am not going to 
have the world making all kinds of surmises.” 

“ Haw, haw, haw ! ” came in unmitigated scorn 
from the young lieutenant, who had brought 
things to a crisis, but hardly after the fashion 
which he had intended. 

“ When it’s only my nasty, hateful old cousin ! 
Boo, hoo, hoo!” This last from the depths of a 
handkerchief that one short half-hour ago had flut- 
tered him a welcome of joyful expectancy. To 
make matters more serious, the balance of the von 
Pappenheim-Waggenheims were heard clumping it 
over the parquet floor in their immediate vicinity. 
Clearly, his opportunities, though rare, were not 
improved with a relative success. 

“ O Seffa, Seffa ! Please forgive me — please, 
dear ! I know I am a nasty, hateful, ugly old 
thing, — all, and more; and you are just right to 
say so, too ! ” 

“No, I am not!'' was the startlingly unforeseen 
reply. “It’s me that’s nasty and hateful, and — 
oh ! everything ! ” with increasing desperation, to 
be followed by renewed sobs, that distractingly 
bade fair to become even more severe by the time 
Fraulein Putz put in an appearance. “ Let — us 
get out of — their — way,” was her immediate 
proposal, a proposal which startled him by its 


56 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


originality, and also awakened the suspicion that 
their, up to the present, hardly enjoyable conver- 
sation might have been more skilfully, and quite 
possibly more agreeably, manoeuvred, if not taken 
so summarily into his own hands. 

She preceded him in silence for some moments, 
keeping him at a respectful distance by certain 
eloquent movements of the head and elbows, which 
were frequently akimbo to support her handker- 
chief, whenever he presumed upon the limit. 

Where are you both ” came presently in 
Fraulein Putz’s sharpest accents, as she groped 
along the walls to get a final optical grab at the 
pictures. 

^‘We are going to wait for you on the stairway,” 
interposed Kurd, with haphazard promptness, 
observing gratefully meanwhile that Joseffa, whose 
arms were still given to an akimbo attitude, bade 
fair to bring up in that vicinity. 

“It is good; it is good,” echoed the clear, shrill 
accents, which at one and the same time brought 
to two of her pupils the conviction that she had 
found a gem, and hastened to inspect it ; while two 
more, one of whom was not her pupil, felt secretly 
somewhat guilty at such unqualified indorsement 
of their line of action. 

“Seffa, say that you forgive me for my cruel, 
unmannerly roughness ; won’t you, dear ? ” 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


57 


She raised her tearful blue eyes to the deeper 
blue of his, that bent so tenderly above her own ; 
and something in them prompted him to raise her 
hand and kiss it softly, forgetful of the world 
beside, as they stood there together in the faint 
winter sunshine that enwrapped them both, for- 
getful that they were on the stairway of Schloss 
Rosenstein, and in full view of passing curious eyes, 
until recalled to present actuality by a voice, the 
voice of Baroness von Pappenheim-Waggenheim, 
who, from a certain acerbity of tone, had evidently 
witnessed the entire proceeding, notwithstanding 
that she solicited the company of Joseffa in her 
coupe drive homewards with a verbal affection 
which should have quite disguised the tone of 
its announcement, and would, most probably, but 
that guilty ears are quick ones. 

Leaving Kurd, as they drove away, in full con- 
viction that he was, on grounds of general wretch- 
edness and misery, fully justifiable in following 
a course immediately projected, — a course which 
required unlimited wine for its fulfilment ; like- 
wise a course void of skeletonian excuse had he 
but been present in the coupe, for Baroness von 
Pappenheim-Waggenheim, having just enjoyed 
a lengthy and instructive monologue from de 
Tocqueville, grappled with affairs temporal in a 
manner worthy even his unqualified approbation. 


58 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


evincing practical application of his wisdom which, 
doubtless, had he not been in ignorance, would 
somewhat have compensated him for a tete-d,-tete 
undergone with an unselfishness never displayed 
in the service of any other creature than that of 
Natalie Zaprony. For, knowing the nerves of la 
Comtesse in anything but the state to submit to a 
course of practical and well-meant, but clumsy and 
maybe inquisitive, sympathy, immolated himself, as 
even men have been known to do for some revered 
clay idol. 

But Kurd, not having the double advantage 
accruing de Tocqueville of discretion and obvia- 
tion, embraced a course most in accord with his 
own youthful ideas. Determining, doggedly, as so 
large a portion of the day had hardly yielded him 
what could be termed lively enjoyment, not to let 
the few remaining hours be classed in the same 
glum category, and after some uncertainty as to 
whether Rudolsheimer would be better alone or in 
company, decided upon von Ruder’s proffered invi- 
tation to a kneipe^ held in celebrant announcement 
of his verlobang with the attractive Katrina, whose 
mother had noted the loving consummation by a 
kaffh visite that same afternoon, although her 
guests had, to state with all proper frankness, gone 
home in far less outward exhilaration of spirits than 
those of her prospective son-in-law bade fair to. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


59 


Little Klappersdorf was banging away on the 
piano when Kurd entered, and singing a song 
which no one could distinguish as to words or 
tune, even had the gay clang of tongues been 
hushed for that express purpose, — as sometimes 
phenomenally occurs in polite society — for Klap- 
persdorf s accompaniment, like his drinking, was 
of such energetic description as to occupy his 
entire attention, and, had they wished for the 
inspiring sentiment thereof, would have been 
forced to receive the same without its present 
extinguishing feature. 

Things were evidently well under way. No 
. soiree glace languor could easily have been detected, 
even by a de Tocqueville. All was life, enjoyment, 
animation, from the sabres and caps hung all in 
a row, sawying in unison with jingling glasses, to 
the trim maids who fluttered in and out from the 
general saal to this cosey corner dedicated cele- 
brant to a heart’s attainment. The sanded floor 
reflected back through haze of smoke the squares 
of plastering that looked uncertain, wavering, in 
frames of groined, black oak. 

Stiff, starched Swiss curtains shut out the night’s 
gloom and all curious passing gaze, while sharp 
click of pewter lids against a score of glasses 
brought again the smiling maids with deft hands 
blooming in half a dozen mugs, which dripped and 


6o 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


foamed together as they were gayly borne across 
the spattered floor. 

Each loud explosion of laughter brought a 
glimpse of the kindly face of the Haus-fratii as 
she leaned far over from her throne behind the 
bureau,^ sending a broad and comely beam that 
swept to farthest corner of the room and back 
again, that all might feel ztt haiise. 

They were all there, and waved a greeting to 
him as he took his place, — all, from old Oberst- 
major von Gbppingen, who, since his retirement, 
had been able to do only two things, , drink and 
scatter anecdotes, — a military quality in no wise 
purely national, — down to Second Lieutenant 
Nassfeldt, sitting next him, who bore his ej^aulettes 
with the same elaborate indifference with which 
he wiped the beer from an undiscernible mous- 
tache. The married and single, irrespective of 
age, had met to greet and say good-by with one 
accord. Only the subject of matrimony was in 
no wise touched upon, ever so lightly, even by the 
single ones, until sufficient quantity of enjoyment 
sparkled in their veins to enable them to cope 
with it in becoming fortitude. As for the married 
ones, they required even more copious draughts 
than their ex-brethren to bring about a necessary 
stage of equanimity. 

War, the chase, cadet-life, and gay days on 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 6i 

urlatib passed in glittering review, until at last, 
from his post at the head of the table, von Rlider 
sang out, — 

“ Bier auf Wein 
Dass lasst Du sein, 

Aber Wein auf Bier 
Dass rath Ich Dir.” 

A lebe Hock! a flurry of bottles, flying corks, and 
jingling glasses, and the happy point is reached 
which toasts a blazing battery or married life with 
equal joy and fervor. 

Kurd forgot all about Joseffa, — Joseffa and her 
tearful, dark-blue eyes ; forgot the little hand that 
lay in his like some fluttering bird that afternoon, 
and toasted and toasted with the rest. 

Klappersdorf was at the piano again, wailing 
at the top of his lungs, which, though of lustiest 
character, poorly coped with the muscles of his 
fingers. 

Increased animation marked the friendly groups 
at the table, each thump on the piano being echoed 
by a peal of laughter that in no wise interfered 
with the earnestness of its merciless operator, 
who, even had he been sufficiently conceited to 
appropriate the flattery, could not well have dis- 
cerned it, because of his own energy. A pensive 
mellowness pervaded them all, extending even to 
Freiherr Oberst von Schwingermiihle, who was 
willing to toast anybody, anything, even his own 


62 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


wife, and no longer used, necessitously, his napkin, 
pulley-fashion, to raise a glass that twitching mus- 
cles, caused by multiplicity of service rather more 
to Bacchus than Mars, failed to accomplish with 
desired rapidity. Rittmeister Klause patted the 
breast-pocket of his military frock in fierce, deter- 
mined emphasis, causing a peal of laughter which 
widened, circled, until all glasses tapped, and gay 
voices mingled in wishing him and his “inten- 
tions,” well, for it was a standard joke throughout 
the regiment that Klause was always, and at 
all seasons, intending firmly to send off a letter 
to the father of some fair one, offering her his 
heart and name. But the letter, the offer, and 
the heart had all grown more or less legendary, 
being as such mentioned, except when he him- 
self announced all three as shortly to be posted, 
clinching the emphasis with fierce, determinate 
mien, as now. 

The National Hymn thumped out from the 
piano in the corner, — King, Queen, country, 
Kaiser collectively, lustily toasted, having pre- 
viously been honored singly. Then- wives and 
sweethearts, as they also had been once before. 
Glasses dashed to earth that no one more misfht 
desecrate ; a jangling of sabres over courtyard 
cobblestones ; last gay good-nights ; and Kurd 
wandered down the quiet street with a comrade 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


63 


not quite as steady as sentimental, who trolled 
softly under his breath, “Two eyes so blue and 
tender,” trolled with a sweetness which 'banished 
all memory of the smoke-filled, wine-fumed room, 
giving instead a pair of blue eyes looking into 
his, that had no thought of the sunshine above 
them, except in aiding his reflection, no memory 
of a world beyond his heart. A lump came into 
his throat and a mist into his eyes. 

Why must they be doomed to wander apart, 
when so many, joyless, were able to link lives 
together ? 

Why should the pelf of a world, powerless to 
buy the riches of two young hearts — as he so 
fondly believed, eternally loving — bar thus apart 
by a deeper abyss than the loveless. 

He clanged his sword angrily along the trottoir 
and swore aloud at the folly. A respectful cough 
from some passing policeman warned him that he 
awakened sleeping burghers. 

He tightened his sword-belt, straightened his 
broad shoulders, and grasping the arm of his 
comrade they went down the Neckar Strasse, 
trolling softly together, “Two eyes so blue and 
tender. ” For the glamour of wine had got into 
his vision. He could sweep through space, 
cutting stars from their orbits, could brave, 
harder still, cold and hunger, or a world’s slight- 


64 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

ing eyes, if he had her — and have her he would, 
he thought and firmly purposed ; maybe a mo- 
ment hence lightly forgot it. But on he went 
trolling, “Two eyes so blue and tender,” two 
eyes that had wept themselves to sleep hours 
ago in a little room which he passed, homeward 
loitering. Eyes whose owner, when questioned 
by sisterly sympathy if the cause of her grief 
were not disappointment at being brought home 
in the coup6, instead of seeing Wilhelma as they 
did, responded in most emphatic affirmative that 
convulsed with fresh sobs the poor little voice 
uttering it. 

But after a while both the man and the woman 
had forgotten their heartache, he through the 
wine-cup, and she through her weeping and 
praying. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The air was soft and balmy, hinting of the 
breath of spring. A few white clouds swam 
lazily in depths of blue. The snow had vanished, 
save some stray dejected patches on Hasenberg 
or Bopser, raising now aloft, unburdened, a wealth 
of fir-decked coronal to greet the beaming sun- 
light. And Waldemar Daggerhof, as he wended 
his way along the Castle Place, towards Palais 
Varasov, almost expected to see the pansy beds 
show trace of blossom between the pine boughs 
sheltering them. 

Madame la Comtesse was at home and would 
receive him,” was the answer presently delivered. 
And, abstractedly, he fell to studying his sur- 
roundings, until the mistress of them should 
appear to bid him welcome. 

The reception room into which he had been 
ushered was a quaint little place, barely escaping 
stuffiness, and oddly insignificant when compared 
with Regolstein, so sumptuously grand, — al- 
though Prince Daggerhof could have told him 


66 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


of evenings spent in this same suite which 
rivalled in brilliance many a soiree of the old 
Faubourg Saint Germaine. For this had been 
the home of Cleopatra Varasov and still bore her 
name, besides the imprint of her living owner- 
ship. It had been occupied by Natalie on her 
return from France, and then, as now, remained 
unchanged to hold through span of a second 
generation the stamp left upon it by an ever- 
busy, scheming brain. Indeed it was Madame’s 
portrait now that caught and fascinated his at- 
tention, although he did not know the subject 
but that its beauty held him. The pose, an 
original caprice, was one which had filled a great 
artist’s soul with enthusiasm, and, tradition said, 
a stronger feeling had imbued his brush with 
glow and languor of the East, lavished upon a 
form that flashed and breathed in sensuous life 
from out a darkling background. 

The attitude was half-reclining on a couch of 
richest furs, that swept away in mellow browns 
or opaque blacks ■ — transparent gloom. 

A robe of creamy white fell loosely from her 
shoulders, confined only at the breast with a 
branch of roses heavy and languorous ; a faint 
spray of tender green trailing against the waxen 
whiteness of her bosom, from which the drapery 
swept like clouds of milky cumuli along a summer 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 67 

sky, floating and falling close, suggesting then 
defining line and curve, until it melted with the 
heavy curtains meeting it. 

A wreath of gems, made in the form of 
ancient laurel crown, gathered the glossy black- 
ness of her tresses high upon her head, save 
for a few low-falling bands half-revealing a high 
brow. 

The profile was sharp cut, but perfect. Cruel, 
but passionate and loving. Thin lipped, but 
breathing sensuousness from eyes that shone 
beneath straight, blackly pencilled brows, fixed 
with a dreamy penetration. 

Gems crept in graduating waves, set sequin- 
fashion, mingling at last a double rope that lost 
itself in quaint medallion above a perfect shoulder. 

One hand rested upon the creamy flow of 
drapery, the other, with its full moulded arm 
arched like an ivory bow against the heavy plush, 
poised on a slender curving wrist and taper 
fingers. 

Only in the hand was a resemblance between 
mother and daughter. A hand which in its tense 
steel muscles held a power to stifle life or 
smother in caresses. 

Some flowers had fallen forward on the couch, 
—roses ; and, as Waldemar more closely scanned 
them, he saw thorns set thickly, up to the very 


68 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


petals curling so' vvaxily innocent, and smiled at 
the satire, that to their portrayer may have meant 
a deeper pain, as he turned to kiss Madame 
Zaprony’s outstretched hand, a reproduction of 
that same soft hand above him, from which even 
a gant de SuMe could faintly veil the character. 

“What pleasure, Madame, to congratulate you, 
in person, upon your recovery from an illness 
which has caused your friends so much alarm.” 

“Not illness. Monsieur, I am never ill,” she 
returned, beaming her brightest smiles upon him. 
“It was only my stupid nerves. They play me 
false sometimes, and make me such a foolish 
coward, trembling at a grass blade in the moon- 
light or a falling leaf.” 

“Which, from the realities you suffer^ might 
as well be a flashing dagger or a falling sword.” 

“ Oh! if you please, nothing so dreadful. You 
see you have set me to shivering already,” was 
her quick reply, given laughingly, but with a 
ring of earnestness in the tone which warned 
him that her nerves were weak, a weakness 
bravely held in leash, but for a clutching of 
the hands that ever betrayed her, and recalled 
again the pictured ones. “We women are ever 
so weak,” she added half-apologetically, and with 
the same forced smile, “that to talk of falling 
daggers and moonlight is not the wisest way 
of welcoming us to convalescence.” 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


69 


“ A blunder that leaves me all contrition and 
confusion at my stupidity, which meant so 
well ; utterly disproving, too, my good uncle’s 
favorite epigram that ‘ignorant ignorance is the 
most comforting comfort.’ ” This last in such 
tenor of gloomy lugubriousness that she broke 
forth into a peal of laughter. Laughter that 
considerably relieved the recrimination of his 
faux pas. 

“ No, it proves two things and disproves noth- • 
ing. Your ignorance is not of the comforting 
description, but only masculine well-intention.” 

“ Let us hope that it is not always so unfortu- 
nate in its results.” 

“ Why, you have amused me. Do you regret 
the kindly effort } It were fortunate if all 
masculine well-intention were so successful.” 

“ Maybe, after all, you are proving, in contrary 
fashion, my uncle’s philosophy, by giving me the 
ignorance to appropriate the comfort your own 
ingenuity has derived.” 

“ It is not often that men are so humble,” 
was her still laughing reply, “and in your instance 
humility shall be rewarded. I am going to take 
you to see a beautiful picture at the gallery, and 
then — fancy — imagine } ” 

“ To take me one step higher and show me a 
beautiful woman ? ” 


70 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


Of course, I should have expected it. I 
deserve all — more — than I got for my rash 
folly. Yes, I am going to take you to see a 
beautiful woman, for goodness is always beauty. 
Indeed, by that reckoning, I may say a very 
beautiful woman. Ah ! revenge is sweet. * Let 
us away,’ as they say at the play.” 

‘^As they also say at the play, ‘Your words 
fill me with alarm. ’ You may intend taking 
me to a convent. Your ambiguity is sinister. 
Besides, I am more than satisfied, for here I 
have both the picture and its golden step.” 

“ Ah ! poor mamma, ” said the Countess softly. 

“But you do not even ask who this great 
unknown, this charming fair one is.” 

“ I utterly refuse to listen. I make my ears 
deaf, like the adder.” 

“But you will hear her, if you do not me. 
I am going to take you to see the Baroness von 
Pappenheim-Waggenheim.” Waldemar’s counte- 
nance broke into a sudden, irrestrainable smile. 

“ I knew you would be pleased.” 

“ I am always pleased to obey Madame’s com- 
mands.” 

“ I noticed the alacrity a moment ago.” 

“ But the picture ? ” 

“ ‘ Hope springs eternal,’ as the English say. 
Yes, the picture is beautiful. Though, had the 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


71 


lady reached Madame von Pappenheim-Waggen- 
heim’s age, she would not, by far, have been so 
attractive for lack of many qualities. Cleopatra 
— the Cleopatra of Markart.” 

Waldemar expressed a proper amount of de- 
light at being allowed such artistic privilege, 
remembering, quite suddenly, de Tocqueville’s 
assertion that virtue, with savages an instinct, 
is, with civilized nations, an accomplishment, 
successful, like other accomplishments, only 
so far as the talent leads — and, in this partic- 
ular instance, from, of course, a purely masculine 
point of view, could hardly recognize a just com- 
parison, involving individual traits to the other 
quite foreign ; but ventured, naturally, no remark, 
and smiled approvingly upon Madame, who was 
carefully selecting some long-stemmed ‘ Cornelia 
Cooks ’ from a slender crystal vase, — roses of 
the creamy hue that blended with others of a 
deeper shadow blossoming along the portrait on 
the wall. And in one of those furtive optical 
voyages from her face to the canvas, just when 
he was most critically considering the relative 
beauties of the living and the pictured one 
she raised her head and smiled ; then, realizing 
fully the bent of his study, her eyes, those lan- 
guorous, tawny eyes, grew very misty and her 
lips formed Poor mamma.” 


72 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


‘‘Forgive me, Madame,” he said softly, “I seem 
doomed to wound you.” 

“No, no,” came in quick reply, with ready 
smile, “I tell you it is only my stupid nerves, 
they are so weak.” 

“ A fact which I should have better held in 
mind.” 

“ Than to call attention to my dear mother’s 
picture.? No, that should have grown a com- 
fort, not a' pain. In trouble, in loneliness, a 
mother’s heart is always the truest haven. But 
somehow, I never seemed to have that comfort. 
Perhaps it was because mamma was so grand, so 
beautiful — to be worshipped rather than entreated. 
In my life I have ever been strangely without that 
sense of protection which goes to make the weak 
so strong. Except for dear old Tocqueville,” she 
added as an after-thought, and in scarce audible 
tone. Then, suddenly realizing herself, flushed, 
and broke into a laugh that echoed poorly the 
tenor of her words. 

Looking down, he saw the roses torn, scattered, 
petal on petal, a heap of pearls upon the parquet 
floor. The stems, broken, leafless, were weaving 
in and out between her restless, nervous fingers, 
that laced and interlaced together. But she had 
regained herself and was once more the woman of 
the world. Gay, bright, maybe a trifle feverishly 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


73 


so, anxious to start at once for the gallery, that he 
might see Cleopatra, to her the only picture of 
the whole collection. 

“ What a feeling of pleasure the mere sense of 
motion gives one ! ” she exclaimed, as they rolled 
towards their destination. “ People say of Munich 
that it is such a slow town that the Judgment Day 
will not come until fifty years after it has hap- 
pened to the rest of the world. But Stuttgart, 
dear, sleepy old Stuttgart, is slower still.” 

“And you have to resort to artificial locomotion 
to feel that you are existing } ” was his amused 
query. 

“ Yes, just that. I am unable to endure more of 
its peaceful monotony, a prolongation of it, now. 
And Zaprony telegraphed his orders to Vienna 
yesterday to have our Palais in the Herrn Gasse 
made ready for immediate occupancy. Think of 
Vienna now. The gayety, the brightness of the 
streets, the very air. Not as it gleams here, like 
sunshine drowsing, but crisp, clear, fresh, joyous. 
So that one feels like taking draughts of cham- 
pagne in at every breath.” 

“The season, too, will soon be in full sway, 
Madame la Comtesse, and that holds, possibly, as 
great an animation for you as the air,” was Wal- 
demar s smiling interpolation, glad to see her so 
thoroughly herself again ; though puzzled at the 


74 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


glimpse of something lying deeper, which to-day 
had twice been accidentally revealed. But the 
bright exhilaration now upon her gave no time for 
surmise, as her gay mood jangled on. 

“ Yes, the balls, receptions, operas, cumbrous 
court festivities glistening with diamonds and dec- 
orations — oh ! that will be life again. We poor 
children of the world, bitten by the tarantula of 
sensation, must have it course wilder, madder in 
our veins until the heart no longer throbs.” 

After all,” he said, leaning back on the luxu- 
rious cushions, and watching with half-closed eyes 
the flitting animation in her face, “ after all, 
what is life but a series of sensations, a varied 
melody that plays upon the gamut of our passions 
until the strings are snapped. A happy man he 
who, dying, can truthfully say that he has lived 
and analyzed them all.” 

'‘No, the living I can grasp, but not the analy- 
zation. Thought and hope may be at birth twin 
sisters, but in development no heart can hold 
them both. And hope is but sensation realized ; 
so why destroy it. Come. Here we are. Let 
us look upon a woman who lived, until, the melody 
of living hushed, took, rather than jarring discord 
— death.” 

“You hold, then,” he said smilingly, as he as- 
sisted her to alight, “ that what we hope for we 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


75 


must realize, — how, at what cost, it matters not ; 
and having for our own to drain the draught, not 
questioning the method or the dregs.” 

“I mean just what you say, but that the method 
and the dregs are one and — thought.” 

The gallery was quiet, almost deserted, save 
for their footfalls echoing vacantly from walls 
oppressed with melancholic suggestions in oils ; 
which Madame, as they loitered slowly, deemed 
well avoided by more than passing glance as 
fullest due for such pictorial ghosts, until her 
mood grew quite another, on reaching the little 
side salon containing Markart’s gem, that blos- 
somed like some wondrous vision from all the dull 
surrounding. 

The barge, heavy with gorgeous flowers that 
mingled their last breath with draperies from 
Sidon and from Tyre, trailed prow to stern along 
the rippling waters of the faint-hued Nile, gleam- 
ing in languid ripples as they kissed its breast. 

Beneath a canopy which rivalled in it* rich 
embroideries the hue of birds of Paradise, rested 
the languorous Queen, her eyes fixed far away 
upon a horizon that held her Antony, her rich lips 
trembling with the thoughts that filled her heart. 

Great fans of ostrich plumes on golden staffs 
made ripple in the scented evening air, as slaves 
and serving women, grouped with voluptuous 


76 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


grace, hung on her slightest bidding, while ebon, 
muscular and grand, lithe, powerful Ethiopian 
chiefs lent straining might that told of vanquished 
lions, strangled serpents, to aid the progress of 
her glittering barge upon its voyage. 

A little Love, gay garlanded with flowers, stood 
at the helm, and watched the seething foam plume 
as it broke upon the prow. 

Th^ evening sky, first primrose, then a glowing 
opal, hinting amethyst, dreamed of a twilight 
rich with stars. And from the hazy plains beyond 
a fresh breeze, filling the sails, rushed from the 
picture. 

While these two pondered on the painted 
scene, theorizing and philosophizing of the life 
that lived, not far away in this same Neckar 
Strasse poor little Joseffa von Pappenheim-Wag- 
genheim was left to work, alone, a problem that 
for Cleopatra, great, mighty, beautiful, had been 
too difficult to solve. 

She was thinking of Kurd and crying softly 
behind the moreen curtains of the salon, when lo ! 
before she could put her face into anything like 
a condition to warrant the coin fiction that she 
had not been crying at all, the cause of her maid- 
enly agitation entered and was standing before 
her, with sword dragging awkwardly between his 
legs, cap brim held shuffling to and fro between 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


77 


his fingers, and such a general presentment of 
boyish, hopeless, alack-a-day expression in his 
face, that her mood changed and she burst out 
laughing, “O Kurd ! how ridiculous you look.” 

“ Thanks,” very stiffly, likewise with change of 
mood, ditto position. 

“ I wish you could have seen yourself.” 

“ I’m sure your own appearance is hardly hand- 
somer. There, there, for pity’s sake don’t begin 
again. You always stop me from saying what I 
had intended, which must have been the right thing, 
for your prompting never seems to dictate it.” 

“ Never mind, you won’t have me for long. I’ll 
soon be gone.” This with such a resigned and 
positive air of speedy transition, that it was his 
turn to look ready to weep. 

^‘Goodness gracious, Joseffa, you haven’t gone 
and got the consumption or some of those 
things.?” 

‘‘No, I wish I had. I’m go — going to Vienna.” 

“ Oh ! is that all,” heaving a large sigh of sud- 
den and intense relief. 

“All! all I So you are not sorry that I am 
going.? I might have known it all along. You 
don’t care for anybody or anything but yourself. 
Men never do.” 

“ Seffa I Seffa I how was I to — ” 

“How were you to feel sorry.? I’m sure I don’t 


78 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


know. If you were at all sympathetic you’d be 
glad. Glad like I am.” 

“ I regret exceedingly I cannot weep for joy, but 
strangely it does not affect me that way, at least 
just now, though I’d like to oblige you.” 

“Yes,” she continued, quite ignoring his per- 
sonal traits of feature. “ Mamma has gone out 
now, to buy me three new dresses, and Marie and 
Sophia are asleep, and Charlotte and Francesca 
have gone walking with Fraulein Putz, and that’s 
the reason I’m all alone.” 

“ Oh, Seffa dear ! How glad I am. I have 
not spent a happy moment since you left me at 
Schloss Rosenstein. I could not bring myself to 
come and learn what the result might be.” 

“ Were you afraid of mamma } ” 

“ Seffa ! Seffa ! ” in a tone deep fraught with 
recrimination, although his face glowed like the 
band about his cap. 

“ Well,” slightly relenting, “ you have no cause 
for thinking or surmising anything unpleasant, so 
far as she is concerned, for her humor has been 
lovely, ever since — you know, — and I only wish, 
if such good result were wrought, that it, or 
something like it, might happen every day.” 

“Quite possibly it may, when you go to Vienna.” 
Whereupon she began to weep afresh, of course 
from joy at bare mention of the jaunt in store. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


79 


Oh Seffa ! Seffa ! ”• he said, taking her plump 
hand softly between his palms, from whose broad 
grasp she tried with gradually desisting effort 
to reclaim it, “why cannot you understand me 
rightly, what my heart means but my lips so badly 
utter, that I love you, love you better than any- 
thing in the whole world.” 

This produced no result save to increase her 
tearful bent, and he was beginning quite seriously 
to think that he might not expect any answer at 
all — though for the present he was amply content 
to hold her hand, — when the sobs became less 
frequent, then, finally, almost ceased. 

“ Kurd, you must know the foolishness of this. 
Even if I do — I mean even if I did care for you, 
this is impossible. Mamma would never let us 
marry. I have no dot^ not a bit.” 

“Never mind the dot he cried with large 
disdain. 

“If you had any of your own, it might be ‘never 
mind.’ But I heard mamma, only yesterday, say 
to Marie and Sophia not to dare look at the von 
Meiningens after one dance, and they have much, 
much more than you. Oh, it’s no use ! It’s no 
use !” followed by fresh and copious tears. 

“ Listen, dear, I have something. I know that 
it is precious little, and not enough yet to reach 
the army standard. But wait ; I’ll be a first lieu- 


8o 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


tenant, then a captain some day, and by that 
time — ” 

“ By that time Fll be quite an old lady and 
you won’t want me. Has that ever occurred to 
you.?” was her startlingly realistic, matter-of-fact 
reply. 

“ I can’t say that it has,” he answered hesitat- 
ingly, after trying vaguely to picture the sweet, 
fresh face before him, crowned with its clustering 
curls, old, worn, wrinkled, waiting for him — for 
him. A mist came into his eyes. He could no 
longer advance hopeful theories, no longer grasp 
the future’s veil and dare it show his bidding. 

The helplessness, the utter vanity, of his poor 
hopings seemed so clear. Other people in the 
world had lived and loved before and never mated. 
Other lips had claimed their vows and heart’s 
allegiance, and they still had lived — lived an 
exis-tence, when they might have lived a life. 

Hate, bitter, scathing, filled his heart, and blind, 
beating rage choked his very breath, that love, 
love strong enough to bear aloft a world, should 
beat its wings against the cage-bars of despair — 
grim, hopeless, and admitting no reclaim. 

On slowly looking up she saw, with tearful gaze, 
the pain of hopelessness reflected in his face, the 
mist before his bright young eyes. 

Then was the woman in her stronger than the 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 8i 

man in him, a power that found awakening in his 
pain and strength in soothing it. 

“ Kurd, this is not manly. Look what you have 
before you — life — a future. War may yet put 
you where you never dreamed. You may rise up, 
up, until you shine all over when you go to court, 
like General von Schwafelstein, and here you sit 
looking as if everything were done, at an end, and 
you were to be shot to-morrow.” 

Mein Gott! I wish I was!” came in muffled 
reply. 

“All, everything, because you cannot have just 
what the moment dictates. You will forget all 
about it in a week. I’m just sure you will.” 

Kurd was equally sure that eternity would find 
him of unchanged opinion. 

“ People often change their minds. I am quite 
sure mamma changed hers. Do you know, I found 
a miniature yesterday in an old trunk in the store- 
room, a miniature that was not papa nor any of 
us, and when I brought it to mamma she cried 
and kissed it, when she thought I was not looking. 
Now, how would he have felt if he had waited for 
mamma ? ” 

Kurd pondered lugubriously a space, then the 
possible idea of doughty knight aspiring still for 
Baroness von-Pappenheim-Waggenheim’s comfort- 
able hand, burst fully upon him and he had to 


82 


CLEOPATRA S DAUGHTER. 


laugh, at first against his will ; then, when Joseffa 
joined the peal his heart seemed eased by half. 

“ Kurd, Kurd, what a bright idea. When I go 
down to Vienna with the Countess Zaprony I 
will try to get a rich, oh ! a very rich husband, 
and when he dies, like your papa and mine, why, 
I shall be left a widow, and, who knows — ” She 
tried to laugh, but somehow it was a dismal little 
attempt. While he stormed about the room, 
clanking his sabre very heavily after him, and 
called her heartless, vowed that she had been 
merely amusing herself with him, trifling with his 
feelings. He would never trust a woman more, 
with all her innocence that veiled deceit, and sub- 
terfuge all truth. 

Yet still, even though she had her way and 
changed his bent, her quivering lips looked sadder 
now, by far, than when he had cursed fate and 
what his lot bereft him. 

Going softly to the piano, she began a little 
song that seemed to bring her less of pain than 
thought. Maybe because the words were English 
and unheard to Kurd. “ Oh ! that we two were 
Maying;” the accompaniment beating, throbbing, 
like a glorious bird striking its wings against 
a cage, — wings that could soar and fly until, 
sun-blinded, it sank back to soar again. 

He ceased his angry tramp about the salon 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


83 


now, and sank listlessly into a chair, half-soothed 
by the rhythm of the song that quivered, besought, 
one tense pleading cry from the depths of a heart 
sore wounded. 

•• “ Oh ! that we two lay sleeping 
Under the quiet sod ; 

With our bodies at rest 
In the earth’s cold breast, 

And our souls at home with God, 

And our souls at home with God.” 

A choking sob, a chord that held the suffocation 
of long-pent-up tears, and the song was done. 

Natalie Zaprony, quietly gliding from beneath 
the portiere, saw the girl, with eyes pleadingly 
uplifted as if piercing the fast-gathering darkness, 
not alone, as she quickly discovered ; for springing 
up confusedly from somewhere near the piano, 
rose the tall figure of an Uhlan. It needed no 
explanation, now, why the Baroness had changed 
her mind and requested that Joseffa, rather than 
Marie, should be her guest in the Herrn Gasse, 
and she kissed the girl softly, her face wet with 
tears, standing there in the gloaming. 



CHAPTER V. 

To please woman is to coquette with the 
devil ! ” ejaculated de Tocqueville sententiously, 
shrugging his shoulders in vain effort to avert the 
stream of draught which rushed through the entre- 
sol of Palais Ostrande, to play with especial iciness 
on the one particular spot that held his person ad- 
justed to indifferent equilibrium upon the crowded 
stairway ; promising, just now, to clear much 
slower than the doom of dismal migraine would 
advance — a doom expectant which awakened this 
charitable fiat, causing the Dowager Princess of 
Bieberach to turn complacently her wizened smile 
upon him and remark that, for her part, she would 
pronounce him too old to do either ; an assertion 
soliciting the retort that loss of taste was equally 
irremediable with loss of years, though, possibly, 
not so trying. 

Being mutually reminded that whatever havoc 
years may have wrought with other faculties, that 
of speech was in no wise retarded, the idea 
seemed to impress itself that possibly, as enforced 


CLEOPATRA S DAUGHTER. 


85 


juxtaposition of person was now helplessly un- 
avoidable, and bade fair for some time to continue 
so, a proportionate degree of amiability would not 
be inappropriate. 

So they fell to chatting quite comfortably, and 
with an elaborate show of interested politeness, 
remindful of the lingual dynamite at hand. 

Quite a charming night for the Princess to 
choose for her private theatricals,” said she of 
Bieberach, shivering under her furs until the 
potidre riz upon her cheeks stood out like frost 
upon a window pane. 

“ Lovely, charming, quite akin to the emotions 
with which her talented genius will presently 
inspire us. Only for the life of me I cannot see 
why they should be called ^private’ theatricals.” 

“How obtuse! why, because you are not ex- 
pected to dispraise them, or anything else that is 
presented to you.” 

Migraine y for instance, which is equally trying, 
though not without remedy. What will they 
soothe us with to-night ” 

“ Something lovely, I hear. A French play 
with no moral to speak of, but irreproachable 
toilettes.” 

“ You enchant me I I would go miles on the 
coldest night to see lovely toilettes. I stood for 
hours, only this morning, before a shop window in 


86 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


the Rothe Thurm Strasse, utterly bewildered by 
a row of dummies.” 

“ Possibly they are all here to-night.” 

“Unhappily they won’t be on the stage.” 

“Beware, you may be rash.” 

“ I wonder how the sweet Princess feels about 
that poor Bombe man who is locked up for making 
fun of her in his paper ” This from a much- 
muffled bundle, with two smaller, but not less 
muffled bundles, about whom she seemed tenderly 
solicitous. 

“Yes, shocking picture, was it not The dear 
Princess sitting upon a divan directing a ballet of 
young countesses. I have told just every one I 
met how horrible I thought it.” 

Great twittering and subdued hilarity, inter- 
rupted by a very old gentleman with white mous- 
taches a la militaire, asking excitedly if there was 
going to be a ballet. 

“ No, of course not. That is, well, some kind 
of a dance, I am not quite sure what, only that it 
is the moral of the play.” 

“ Indeed !” disgustedly, “ what moral .? ” 

“ As I said, it is the moral, and it will be your 
own fault if you don’t deduce it, though what it 
is I have not the faintest idea. But,” with fresh- 
ened animation, “it is French, so each one can 
guess his own.” 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


87 


“Very proper and right, I am sure. It gives 
the mind something to do ; a feature quite often 
omitted in plays now-a-days.” 

“ Oh ! how dreadful!' This from a stout lady 
who stopped the procession, at the head of the 
landing, to make her announcement. 

“ The Princess had to send and borroiv a child, 
at the last moment, to take the part of Madelaine’s 
chere etifatit!' 

“ How outrageously provoking. Why, I thought 
it all arranged for one of her own.” 

“ So it was, but the little thing got ill.” 

“ Horrible ! How wretched, children can be so 
aggravating. Just at the last moment, of course.” 

“Nothing of the kind. The child had been 
under medical care for a week, and she was too 
busy rehearsing to know a word of it.” 

“ How wretched not to tell her, putting things 
all awry in this fashion.” 

“ Poor Princess ! ” 

“ Poor Princess ! ” 

This from the bundles, for whom the electrifying 
intelligence had been intended. 

“ From a ballet to a baby, — all tastes provided 
for,” announced de Tocqueville. 

“ Charming,” echoed the Princess. “ Now if 
the supper is only as comprehensive.” 

And the groups separated, to combine presently 


88 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


in assuring their noble hostess that they antici- 
pated just such a heavenly time as they always 
enjoyed when her artistic spirit deigned to ele- 
vate them. 

An elevation that sought immediate assistance 
in plentiful libations of iced champagne, which 
the Princess Bieberach declared, on being served 
for the fourth time, was the only thing to prevent 
her taking her death from that frightful chilling 
she got on the stairway, while de Tocqueville 
nominated it an excellent antidote for migraine. 

Just after the violins had laughed and glided 
through a Mozart overture, the Count, hearing a 
subdued murmur which his advanced wisdom re- 
fused to attribute to melodic admiration, turned 
toward a doorway to behold the Staat entrh of 
Natalie Zaprony, whose beauty shone with a regal 
splendor that commanded, even from this jaded 
throng, a sensation of wonderment. 

A robe of sheeny white, caught with jewelled 
butterflies, floated and swathed about her, while 
a necklace of Oriental splendor, which had been 
her mother’s, swept her snowy bosom, coiling, 
snake fashion, low in the corsage to gleam and 
glitter clustering serpent’s eyes, reflectant to the 
light of hers. 

Royalty itself was in her train as she moved 
slowly towards a deep embrasured window that 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


89 


held a luxurious fatiteitily placed throne-wise be- 
neath a waving canopy of palms, which lent their 
flitting tracery of shadow to mellow waxen glare, 
reflecting pink from glowing curtains that shut 
out the night. 

Zaprony, lingering at a distance, conversing 
with a group of Magyar beauties, told, now and 
then, by fleeting glance, the spot that held his 
heart ; causing de Tocqueville, who was eying 
them in furtive side-glance fashion, as was his 
wont, to melt and soften in the outline of a smile, 
that held more of quiet praise, content, than scorn 
or gay derision, his chief facial guests. Richly 
uniformed Hungarian officers glittered and gleamed 
beneath the crystal lustres with a brilliance rival- 
ling them, showing in their beaming animation of 
countenance, strange contrast with the cold, unim- 
pressible faces of beribboned diplomats engaging 
their attention, — faces that hid the triumph or 
the woes of nations with an equal phlegm. This 
envoy, chatting now so placidly complacent, knew 
not but to-morrow’s sun might bring a crisis that 
would upheave his ministry, while just beyond, 
one greater still looked on with even more pla- 
cidity, although he meant the loan, for which his 
wily fingers sought, to plunge his land in war and 
blood that might drown out its very place upon 
the map, or elevate to heights where thieving 
would be glorious victory, greater than arms. 


90 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


Graceful Poles, misty in silk and lace, looked 
up with a world of enticing coquetry from under 
sweeping lashes that half-veiled eyes of a blue 
deep as the North Sea’s dashing their shores ; 
while dreamy, odalisque, breathing of the East and 
orange sunshine, were some beauties from King 
Milan’s court, that waved and waved their fans 
with Spanish languor, speaking but rarely, and 
then with a smile that lit their faces with a 
sudden fire which sunset lends a heavy cloud 
o’ercharged with rain. 

Viennese were there, gay, graceful Viennese, 
who flashed P'rench coquetry from rich Italian 
lips, and smiled the smile of sunny skies, from out 
dark Austrian eyes, upon dark Austrian eyes bent 
tenderly above them. 

The music swayed in undulating rhythm of a 
waltz, like luscious blossoms of pomegranate bent 
tossing to the winds, and servants rich in gala 
livery moved here and there, with great silver 
trays bearing tempting freight of dainty ices and 
rare champagne wines. 

The silken curtain fluttered down upon the last 
scene of a French comedietta which the Prin- 
cess Bieberach pronounced “quite French,” in a 
tone that left no possible chance for cavil or gain- 
say. 

“ My dear Count, your nation certainly pos- 


Cleopatra's daughter. 


91 


sesses greater ability in disguising, both in 
cookery and morals, that it serves to an admiring 
world, than our poor barbarian tongues may ever 
tell.” 

Merci, Madame la Princesse,” came de Tocque- 
ville’s suave reply. “It is merely the difference 
of the nude and naked in art ; the one is inspira- 
tion, the other indecency.” 

“ Mon cher Comte, such French humility ! 
Really you are charming.” 

“ Pardon, Madame ; only to-night you told me 
that I was too old to amuse the devil.” 

“ Ah ! but I am young, at least more ingenue 
than he, and consequently not so difficult to en- 
tertain. Come, give me your arm. I wish to 
pay my compliments to the Ostrande upon her 
success.” 

“ A most timely remembrance, if you have not 
bestowed them all upon me.” 

“ Even were such the case, you imply small 
regard for my ingenuity. I can risk a great deal : 
indeed, few can risk more ; but to refrain from 
stultifying a lot of amateur actresses, whether 
they have done well or not, is a matter of grave 
recklessness.” 

“ Because of tender and easily wounded sensi- 
bilities ? ” 

“ Exactly. They are so liable to mistake tern- 


92 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


per for feeling, that when people regret hurting 
them, they are mostly in a rage.” 

Mou Dieu^ Madame, I beg of you, let us fly 
to avert disaster,” said the Count, graeefully offer- 
ing his arm ; and together, in sedate, becoming 
manner, these worthy friends gravely paraded 
down the suite to a distant salon, where their fair 
hostess held her court, still in the Parisian emana- 
tion which had incidentally concealed her broken 
heart a moment ago, behind rose-tinted footlights. 

“ Now what do you say to my complimentary 
resources.^” queried the Bieberach lightly, as, this 
little necessity complied with, they swept onward 
to the supper room quite buoyant, within sight of 
virtue’s sweet reward. 

“ It only confirms my estimate of your rare 
merit, that you never give way to the truth, ex- 
cept when you are tired.” 

My dear Count, don’t, pray don’t parade your 
age. / never get tired until after supper.” And 
with this remark began Chablis and oysters, like- 
wise perfect equanimity of mind ; an equanimity 
as fully shared by many younger participants, who 
allowed no eager expectations of the cotillon to 
shorten present enjoyment ; and the hours had 
told the night well done, before another crush 
upon the stairway betokened a great feast at an 
end. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


93 


Natalie Zaprony had danced the mazy figures 
with an exiled Prince as partner. An exiled 
Prince who met her once again, after the lapse of 
years, as gay as when in Stuttgart she had weh 
corned him an honored guest at court, celebrating 
a round of visits to the powers just preceding his 
enthronement; journeyings marked by a brilliance 
which betokened golden destiny. 

No trace of past disaster found its vent in 
speech. He smiled, talked of the present, and 
seemed more gay than any there ; but in his whit- 
ened hair and grief-marked face that bore the 
furrows of misfortune deep as sabre scars, there 
rested the traces of a power which scorches 
oftener than blesses : blinding on dizzy summits 
only to hurl backwards whence it came. 

Though, for all this, painful emotions like to be 
awakened because of paths through which they 
led, flung no betokening shadow on her face, that 
beamed with quiet happiness as she crossed be- 
neath the porte cochhe^ lit with its brazen stan- 
dards all aglow, leaning upon Zaprbny’s arm. A 
look of perfect and contented joy, resting there 
still as, some hours later, she welcomed her guests 
to dejeuner \ a look which caused the Princess of 
Bieberach to recount a conversation with her 
hostess of the night previous, after first elabo- 
rately assuring Madame that she had come early 


94 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


for the express purpose of resting before she be- 
gan to eat, as fatigue always detracted more or 
less from her enjoyment. 

“ Natalie, my dear,” she began in her sharp, 
wheezy tone, “you look radiant, absolutely radi- 
ant. I said to Marie Ostrande last night, or 
rather this morning — I like to say something 
agreeable just before I leave to keep me in peo- 
ple’s minds — ‘ Marie, I have discovered the eighth 
wonder of the world, a woman whose husband is 
not only in love with her, but she with him.’ ” 

“ As she abominates her own, I don’t doubt but 
you left your desired impression,” said de Tocque- 
ville, as Countess Zaprbny turned to welcome 
some newly arrived guests, after having patted 
the old Princess’s hand softly, in half-heeding 
fashion. 

“ I am sure of it, the more so as both her hus- 
band and his latest detestation were quite near 
at hand.” 

“And what was her reply.?” he queried, smil- 
ing grimly. 

“ Quite as I expected, that it took one husband 
to learn to appreciate another, and, maybe, when 
she had had two it might be the case with her.” 

“What happened then .? ” 

“ I am sure I do not know. I kissed her good- 
night, as I hardly cared to wait and see.” 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


95 


Ah ! here she comes now. She lived through 
it, at any rate; and in time for dejeuner too. 
Madame, permit me.” This as the butler an- 
nounced devotions. 

Joseffa, bright and smiling, was seated next 
Waldemar Daggerhof, who had just that morning 
arrived at Hotel Imperial, and was giving her 
the latest weather resume of Stuttgart, nothing 
more notable having transpired. 

How odd it seemed to look back upon that 
quiet, eventless life which held her past, all told 
not so full of living and excitement as these short 
two weeks. 

•'They have all been so kind to me, — Madame 
and the Count, and Count de Tocqueville too. 
He takes me to. the theatre and concerts, only he 
seems more amused by my amusement than with 
the people on the stage.” 

“ I do not doubt but it is more rarely foreign 
than what he sees there. He hardly appears to 
have retained much youthful impressibility.” 

“ I am sure he seems perfectly abandoned to 
enjoyment now,” returned Joseffa promptly, fully 
determined that her new-made friend should find 
staunch ally ; and looking across the table to 
where he sat with Princess Bieberach, began, after 
a youthful fashion, to weave a tender- heart ro- 
mance of early love, long years of separation, then 


96 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


consummation in old age. A heart romance so 
much like her own and Kurd’s might be, that 
when tomates Egyptiennes came in the me^m her 
eyes had grown almost too misty to distinguish 
them ; an emotion which Waldemar had witnessed 
out of the corner of one eye, and remembering 
suddenly a scene just two weeks old, somehow, 
with possibly a superior analytical experience to 
aid him, combined the two ; talking quite ani- 
matedly in his plate for the space of some mo- 
ments, until her ready laugh told him the cloudlet 
passed and he raised his eyes from path to be 
rewarded by her sweetest smile. 

Countess Zaprbny seemed gayer, more confi- 
dently brilliant, than he had ever seen her. That 
indefinable shadow which had somehow crept in 
upon her almost unawares, and with faint bidding 
at their last meeting, was vanished, leaving, in- 
stead, a mood of joyousness to grow in place ; a 
joyousness that seemed so calmly fixed in cer- 
tainty as to defy all thought of ill ; not reck- 
lessly, but with a grand superiority of mien which 
well became her. 

“Is it true, Natalie, my dear.?” queried the 
Princess Bieberach blandly, “ that Prince Michael 
is going back to those people who chased him 
away .? ” 

“ The difficulty seems, Madame, that it was not 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


97 


the people, as you put it, that chased him away, 
but outside power ; though no one can presage 
the result.” 

** Well, however it may have been brought 
about, the sweetness of his temper seems hardly 
improved,” asserted the Bieberach in definite 
tone ; for when I asked him if he was not de- 
lighted to get safely back from his savages to 
civilization, he said that the only distinguishing 
difference between them and us was lack of cer- 
tain instances of longevity, rather in their favor.” 

I trust you told him that such a small matter 
might not have troubled him had he but stayed a 
little longer.?” queried a tiny, sharp-voiced lady 
from the depths of her salad. 

Nothing of the kind ; I told him that we real- 
ized the advantages of a good present over a great 
future, and went on extending ours indefinitely.” 

“His does not seem of much use to him, except 
to decorate evening parties ; though, Marie, I must 
say, in all truth, he added immensely to j/ours” 
“Thanks,” very disdainfully. “In London they 
run after such things, as menagerie creatures 
after curiosities ; but here we have so many that 
really — ” and a flourish of her fan conveyed her 
meaning — it is needless to add hardly flattering. 

“ I spent the season in London last year, your 
Highness,” chimed in Baroness von der Weide, 


98 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


“ and oh ! such an amusing thing happened. One 
lady gave just a charming garden party, and had 
a black king or something of the kind — very 
black indeed — so everybody came. Her most 
intimate friend gave the same kind of an enter- 
tainment the next afternoon — imagine her agony 
of mind to surpass this, — and what do you think 
she did .? ” 

“ Got his wives,” put in quite unexpectedly a 
Hungarian lady with a deep voice and well-de- 
fined beard, whose attention, up to this point, had 
been solely claimed by her breakfast. 

“Madame Szanto, if you had ever been in Lon- 
don you would hardly want to go the length of 
bringing savage women to increase the charm of 
feminine attraction, already so preponderating,” 
ejaculated old General de Luneville, feelingly. 

“ Trh magnijiqiiey trh magnijiquey This 
from the Hungarian lady, who had gone back to 
her salad, alike totally unheeding and forgetful of 
surrounding curiosity. 

“ I am sure you must all leave off guessing, you 
would never be successful, she was such a bright 
woman,” continued the Baroness, in no wise dis- 
concerted by recurrent interruptions. “ She got a 
tattooed man. from heaven knows where, to come 
and recite.” 

“ About heaven knows what,” appended the 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 99 

Hungarian lady, suddenly awakening from saladic 
enjoyment. 

“ That was of small consequence, it was the 
success of the season.” 

“ Will he marry.-*” This from a meek-voiced 
lady of impressive proportions. 

“ Will who marry } — the tattooed man } ” 

Ciely what tattooed man We were talking 
about Prince Michael. I have just been hanging 
upon your words. I adore him, so melancholy, so 
exalted, so — oh ! everything.” 

“ ‘So — oh ! everything.’ That entirely expresses 
the condition of his country, at any rate,” testily 
interposed a hook-nosed old grandee, who was 
strongly suspected of having loaned the principal- 
ity vast sums, which, unlike its ruler, had failed to 
return. 

“No army, no army to speak of, the cause of 
the whole thing,” retorted General von Schwangel- 
stein, a rabid Bismarckian, and ex-commander-in- 
chief of the ducal Seidlitz-Pfefferingen armies. 

“ But, General, remember, they could not keep 
their troops under such strict surveillance as you 
did, not being able to review the whole army in an 
afternoon drive in the Promenade Platz,” calmly 
corrected Princess Bieberach, exquisitely literal. 

“ As for the army, I hear they grew so afraid 
of dynamite — ” began a young man with great 


lOO 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


gusto, to be cut short by Count Szanto, an alleged 
raconteur with a very jolly voice, that was never 
heard until his inner promptings, being fully grat- 
ified, had, so to speak, forced it out. “ Speaking 
of dynamite reminds me. Have you heard of a 
remarkable occurrence that bids fair to convulse 
the Abnanach de Gotha ? ” 

Several present had learned of remarkable 
occurrences that had gone still further, and suc- 
ceeded in convulsing outside works. But being 
themselves more or less intimately affected, quite 
naturally refrained from faintest affirmation until 
this particular parallel should be more definitely 
indited. 

“ Yes, my friends, none other than the tragically 
delayed engagement of a Prince, who shall be 
nameless, and — ” 

“ Oh ! I am just positive you mean that dear 
Prince Michael,” an interpolation from his meek- 
voiced enthusiast. 

“Mon Dieu ! Madame,” put in de Tocqueville, 
“you would not expect a man to lose his princi- 
pality and be in love at one and the same time ; 
either is calamity sufficient.” 

“ Maybe, if he has not yet been married, he 
suffers agonies through ignorance. Proceed, I beg 
of you. Count Szanto. Mon cher Comte, how can 
you have the heart to prolong this frenzy of curi- 


Cleopatra’s daughter. ioi 

osity into which our friend has plunged us.” An 
appeal from the Princess Bieberach, who motioned 
her wine-glass replenished, possibly to fortify her 
patience. 

“Yes, I heard the whole thing at the club, 
and as I was about to add, in regard to the 
dynamite — ” 

“ Oh ! tragic beyond anything, since — well, 
since — ” 

“ The Prince’s treasurer eloped with the taxes,” 
put in the grandee, not wishing an untragic 
parallel selected. 

“ Eloped, who has eloped ? ” excitedly interro- 
gated Countess Szanto. But as her husband never 
considered anything she might remark, the tragedy 
proceeded, quite unruffled. 

“ Since Princess Clothilde died on her wedding 
day.” 

“ A most fortunate occurrence, for her, at any 
rate, as — ” 

“ It seems the Prince had sent his most trusted 
envoy to a court, that shall also be nameless, to 
arrange for his marriage with a fair Princess. 
Just as they were about signing the contract, an 
equerry, covered with dust and foam, dashed into 
the courtyard.” 

“ Whose courtyard ? ” from the slightly deaf 
old lady. 


102 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


“A nameless Prince.” 

“ How shocking. What is the nobility coming 
to ? Has the Pope no — ” 

The mother, fearing some ill, caught up the 
pen and fainted dead away. Thus staying proceed- 
ings, — fortunately, — I speak advisedly. For what 
despatches do you suppose he carried ? ” 

“ Prince Michael, and all that, I heard it at the 
club. But the dy — ” 

Quite right of the Princess to await develop- 
ments, so sweet and motherly.” 

“For my part, I consider a good — ” began a 
lady, whose four daughters had been divided among 
the sons of a sugar refiner, upon equal division of 
the property. “For my — ” 

“ How ridiculous ! ” swept in General de Lune- 
ville, with volatile scorn. “ How ridiculous ! to 
enthrone all these petty German princes, abso- 
lutely good for nothing.” 

“ Not at all, my dear General. They do to 
marry to the English.” 

“Their divine right is — ” orated General von 
Schwangelstein pompously. 

“ Listen, my friends, listen,” cried the Countess 
Zaprony animatedly. Holding aloft a bit of 
crested parchment, bearing intimately upon the 
subject, and one for some moments engaging her 
absorbed attention with a contradictory diplomat 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


103 


so thoroughly as to escape its particularly exquisite 
application under existing circumstances. “ Listen, 
I beg of you. How very delightful : — 

‘ Madame, — I am petitioned to reascend my 
throne, and have just acquiesced to the pleadings 
of my people’s envoys. The Powers make conces- 
sions and all is well. 

“This will explain my detention from your 
charming dejeuner morning. Michael.’ 

“ The dear Prince, I knew things would be as 
they should.” 

“ Providence was forced to interfere. How 
chagrined that wretched woman must feel regard- 
ing her daughter .? ” 

“My dear Count, pray tell us the remainder 
of your charming story about Prince Michael.” 

“ Pardon, Madame. It is neither my story nor 
about Prince Michael,” with wonderful prompti- 
tude. 

“ Who was it, then .? Tell us at least how the 
story ended } ” 

“ Oh ! ” with slightly less promptitude. “ The 
Prince — was dead.” 

“ Indeed ! ” returned the Princess Bieberach, 
dryly, “the wonder is that we are not the same.” 



CHAPTER VI. 

“ CiEL,” and, with a little gesture of comical 
dismay the Countess Zaprony pushed aside a 
salver piled high with notes and invitations crested 
and monogramed, leaves in the whirl of fashion, 
betokening the tide of the wind ; distinguishing 
in this instance their fair recipient with such un- 
bounded prodigality as to demand an endurance 
even greater than she could present ; although the 
energy which inspired her progress through the 
gay round of dissipation was a standard theme of 
envy with her intimate circle, that emulated, often- 
est ineffectually, the perfect elasticity prompted 
by her Muscovite physique. 

“ del!' and she leaned back languidly, holding 
the Sevres chocolate shell listlessly, forgetful of 
its inviting contents, as she watched the sun- 
shine faintly sifting through Moorish lattice-work 
which screened the windows of her boudoir, mak- 
ing trembling mosaic along Eastern hangings, 
heavy with their own richness and the breath of 
sandal woods ; creeping in flitting, furtive fashion 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 105 

across the crystal blossoms that entwined Vene- 
tian mirrors, to glint more lingeringly upon a 
Florentine enshrinement which held the portrait 
of her husband in its argent arabesque ; a point 
that stayed her gaze as lingeringly, until the 
heavy portiere was swung aside with gay Bon 
jonr'' and de Tocqueville stood upon the thresh- 
old. 

** Entrez, entrez ! How opportune ! Just in time 
to prevent my abandon to a desolation of despair. 
What am I to do ? Look ! at least forty cards for 
forty dejeuners y diners y and receptions. Come, tell 
me those demanding my attention first,” and she 
smilingly pushed the salver towards him, sinking 
back to her comfortable pose and toying idly 
with her tiny spoon ; while he, always obedient to 
her bidding, gravely adjusted his glass, tossed 
the cards upon a low divan, and proceeded to 
assort them with a play of feature which for some 
moments held the Countess highly entertained, 
an entertainment presently accentuated by a gay 
peal of laughter. 

Why, why do you not give play to that de- 
lightful freedom of facial gesture oftener.'* It 
would plunge the most dismal soiree into hilarity, 
I am positively sure.” 

“ Not at all, ma chhe Natalie. One can say 
what one means, but never look it ; to society 


io6 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

appearance, not breath, conveys meaning. Have 
you desire to thrust me from this earthly para- 
dise .? ” 

“If you share my delight in its enjoyment, even 
in a small degree, far be it from my intention.” 

“And you do enjoy it, to its fullest.^” he 
asked, presently, having for some moments been 
plunged in thought deeper than her query could 
well warrant. 

“ Enjoy it? I seem to fly in an atmosphere as 
full with gayety and pleasure as sunbeams thick 
with dancing gold dust.” 

“ Your happiness is full ; you realize all that 
your heart can wish ? ” 

“ Yes,” she said, after a little silence, and falling 
into his greater earnestness of tone. “Yes; what 
could a life imagine more than mine achieves.? 
Health, luxury, splendor, friends unbounded ; and, 
best of all, the truest devotion that a noble heart 
can give.” 

“You can spare your old friend for a little, then, 
can you not.?” he asked, presently, an odd hesi- 
tation in his voice, always so nervously, sharply 
prompt. 

“Spare you.?” she cried, the look of gratified 
exaltation fleeing suddenly from her countenance, 
to be replaced by one of half-expectant terror, 
then, as suddenly, to fade away in one of her 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 107 

rare smiles ; but her fingers still twitched ner- 
vously at the heavy cords confining her morning 
robe. “ Oh ! why will you needlessly alarm me 
again with your wild African projects.? You do 
not need to go. Look what changing kaleidoscopic 
sensation society offers, abundantly more varying 
and exciting than the savages could possibly 
afford you. Come, come, let us talk of what the 
day holds for us, not of wild journeyings.” 

“This is hardly a willingly undertaken one, my 
dear,” he said, with such gentleness that her eyes 
swam suddenly in a mist of tears, awakened, pos- 
sibly, more by the worn look which crept upon his 
features, giving them an aged, pinched expression, 
than by the tone conveying them. 

“ No — you cannot mean — Spain .? ” and her 
lips formed themselves unwillingly, almost rigidly 
to the query, leaving her face even more livid and 
drawn than his momentarily had been. 

“ No, no,” he interrupted hastily in a relieved 
manner, as if glad to spare her other pain than 
held in that his next words would convey; sinking 
his voice almost to a whisper when he gave them 
utterance : “No, not Spain — not Africa — but 
farther still.” 

For an instant she was silent ; the sentence 
seemed to convey no meaning to a brain momen- 
tarily stunned by half-formed fear, to leave it 
blank, impressionless. 


io8 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

“Yes, farther still,” he repeated softly, compas- 
sionately, as if to shield as long as possible the 
pain this would bring to her. 

“My God ! can you mean ? — ” came gaspingly 
from her rigid lips, which refused to utter that 
last poignant, pregnant word. 

“ I mean — death,” he said, quite calmly, almost 
coldly now, but half-restrainedly, to rob her of the 
wounding even a second’s space. 

She made no sound, except a moan, such as 
bears out the fluttering breath when a dagger 
blade pierces the heart’s depth ; then she stag- 
gered slowly, blindly, groping with hands that 
sought convulsively the fastening of the lattice 
woodwork, and flung wide the casement, letting in 
a blast of icy winter and a flood of glittering sun- 
shine. 

Uncertainly she leaned her head against the 
stone- wrought Jleiirs de lis that bloomed along the 
casement. The street below sent up a noisy echo, 
the whirr of quickly passing wheels and blur of 
many voices. Now a laugh, a shrill, penetrating 
laugh, made her shiver convulsively and grasp at 
the heavy hangings that swayed in her tense hold. 

She raised her eyes half-wonderingly into the 
smiling sky, passed one hand lightly along a fret- 
ted gargoyle ; then, putting out her arms wildly 
as if to ward off a blow, sank forward upon a 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 109 

divan, thence to the floor, the red-gold of her hair 
escaping its fastenings, to coil and glitter among 
the cushions. A long, dry, shuddering sob, and 
she raised a questioning face that held no longer 
the self-reliant joy and hope, the gay, half-reckless 
confidence of one short hour ago. 

“ To leave me alone,” she pondered slowly, as 
if trying to impress the meed of grief dealt to her. 
Then, springing up suddenly she cried, “ Oh ! my 
friend, you cannot mean that ! It is some gloomy 
foreboding, some horrible phantasie, which has 
fastened itself upon you, simulating reality until 
you yourself believe it. You are well, strong, and 
promise years of life,” she cried excitedly, laugh- 
ing with a laughter more harrowing than tears ; 
“you will live years, years longer than I — tell 
me so ! ” and she put both hands upon his head, 
pushing back the whitened hair from off his face, 
until their eyes met, and shuddering she sank 
at his feet. 

“Natalie, Natalie, listen! Do not hasten my 
end by this anguish, if you wish to hold me. God 
knows I long to shield you — and will,” he said, 
firmly, fixedly determinate, setting his teeth hard 
together and drawing a quick breath that quivered 
in his nostrils. “ I have dreaded this, dreaded 
with a terror to which death is joy, to tell you of 
the fate awaiting me. Only yesterday my valet 


I lO 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


found me senseless from an attack, of late recur- 
rent, that the greatest doctors of Vienna tell me 
comes from a heart almost at its last. How odd,” 
he went on, with half-sarcastic irony, “that I, I of 
all others, should get my death-blow from my 
heart, a thing I thought had died a natural death 
these forty years. Listen, child, take courage. 
The worst may come years hence — years which 
may hold a freedom to make me no longer neces- 
sary ; but of a certainty, so say the doctors, those 
wise fools who only know what we must learn to 
tell them, that any shock, any sudden jar, will 
stop the throb which now sometimes comes pain- 
fully; and to avert the danger of leaving you 
unprepared, I risk what you so dearly would 
avert.” 

His words came slower and more slowly until 
they ceased, and looking up she saw great drops of 
sweat stand bead-like on his forehead and a gray- 
ish pallor lining downward from the set corners of 
his firm -shut mouth. 

Her shivering ceased, she choked her dry sobs 
back, and caught his hands in both her own, kneel- 
ing thus some moments silently. 

It was he who broke this silence first. “ Natalie, 
child, you have no need for fear; all will be well. 
He can never again trouble you. For once, those 
doctors have said rightly.” 


Cleopatra’s daqghter. 


Ill 


But the agony of fear that sometimes creeps 
upon me in the night, an agony that chloral, noth- 
ing will drown from my sight. That hideous 
spectre, creeping, creeping out of the darkness, 
with eyes that burn and burn like living coals 
into my brain. Sometimes I hear him call me, 
‘ Natalie, Natalie so cold and chill the words ring 
out that I must bury my face in the hangings of 
the bed, else I would shriek aloud. Then day- 
light comes, I arise, laugh at my folly and straight- 
way forget it, only with each repetition the fear 
sears deeper, deeper, until, perhaps, my heart, not 
yours, will cease to beat the first.” 

“That is merely the result of all this excite- 
ment. You will be well over it when Lent once 
begins and you find quiet and rest at Regolstein.” 

“ Regolstein ! ” she iterated, shuddering, “ Reg- 
olstein ! The falling mirror which held both your 
pictures was there, the dreams that haunt me most 
are there, where I should be the happiest. Oh ! 
why do I live to bring a curse to those who mean 
me best.” 

“ Do not distress yourself so, Natalie ; I cannot 
bear it. If you would prolong my life bear up 
and show that nerve which has been steel in far 
more dreadful anticipation. We must talk quietly, 
calmly, arranging all things, so that, should I die 
to-night or twenty years from now, all will be well.” 


12 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


His words had their effect. She rose up, slowly, 
painfully, as if the vigor of her youthful frame had 
been felled by one savage, cruel blow that swept 
the light from out her life, leaving instead a hope- 
less dread which might at any time prove but the 
augur of a doom. 

Uncertainly her fingers wove the tawny mass 
about her head. Mechanically she straightened the 
loose, sweeping tresses, confining them with golden 
pins ; then, smoothing her disordered draperies, 
she quietly sank into the chair which one short 
hour ago had held her radiant with a life that zoned 
a world, — the world of joy sure and protected. 

** I am ready,” she began, in a slow, measured, 
hopeless way, “to do just as you bid. You must 
forgive a selfishness that seems inhuman, but I 
am only a woman whose heart can hold but one, 
or I would not be so slow to deem your life dear — 
but for the gift of its protection.” A moment’s 
space told silence, then she began vehemently, 
“No, no, do not regret my plight; it was I who 
brought it on myself. You have no ground for 
remorse, none. Let it drop. There is no danger 
but in the wild imaginings of a selfish woman who 
has not thought for others that does not centre in 
herself, no heart beyond her joy. 

“ If the worst comes to the worst, leave me alone 
to receive disaster born of my own will, which can 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 113 

receive no doom too deep for its deserts. It 
makes me strong, man, to think that I am alone, 
dependent on my own resources to face out the 
worst ; it makes me gifted with a cunning which 
before I never held. I feel it now, strong enough 
to face the worst and vanquish.” She had risen 
and was pacing the room quickly, rapidly, clasping 
her hands tightly, to unclasp them showing bloody 
imprint where the nails had bit into the tender 
flesh. Then, before he could steady her, she had 
swayed forward, senseless at his feet. Tenderly 
he placed his arm about her, smiling grimly one 
of his slow, satiric smiles when he found himself 
too weak to lift her. 

With a gasp, half a sob, she raised her eyelids 
slowly, looked uncertainly about her, and, realizing 
all, began to weep softly. De Tocqueville left her 
thus, confident that she would be the better for it 
presently, and going to the window, gazed grimly 
down at the virile life surging and ebbing in the 
great city’s artery beneath, still smiling grimly at 
all the power powerless to grant one atom more of 
living; when her light touch upon his arm told 
him that she was ready for his bidding, a bidding 
which must be the last, when hope had always 
told him that he would ever stand between her 
and a dreadful possibility of woe that would crush 
out her very life, or, bitterer still, all that made its 
living joy. 


1 14 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

In those dreadful days, when all the women of 
the court jeered at me covertly, a deserted wife, 
and all the men seemed fraught, as their nobility 
of instinct dictates, with the idea that a wife 
forsaken is a wife forsaking, then I was strong. 
Their very looks so seared my heart as to encase 
it in a panoply wrought of its own woes. Then, I 
had none to turn to ; you were not yet there. It 
cannot be that, having once ceased to bear it 
through alone my lesson is forgot. It must be 
that life — living, loving, joyful life — has made me 
weak at bare anticipation of its loss, a loss phan- 
tasmal, impossible. As you have said, the doctors, 
for once, are wise.” 

“Of course they are,” he added quickly, with 
pacifying assurance. “ Right beyond all chance or 
possibility of doubt. He is dead. Dead to the 
world, and that means dead to life.” 

“Yes, that means dead to life,” she echoed, 
shivering. 

“When your visit to de Saignon wrought the 
miracle of rescuing his small manliness, though not 
as your prayers bade ; when in endeavoring to save 
a wretch you brought upon him a just punishment 
that fell below his meeding ; — then you were mor- 
ally free to cast off even the remembrance of him, 
as he had cast off your heart. I look with wonder 
now upon a nature, nobly generous and compassion- 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 115 

ate as yours, nursing him so long and tenderly, flee- 
ing southward when danger threatened him ; for 
you forgot yourself, and that too with his voice call- 
ing ever ceaselessly, not your name, but another’s. 
Then, even your calm, grand, scornful pity, which 
sought to save his life, to fling it back to both, 
tried me beyond all patience. Do you remember 
that night,” he asked grimly, ^‘when I was ready 
to stay him, once and for all, from his endless 
pratings ? Would he had gotten those drops you 
dashed from my hand, and now we would not be 
recking what loomed beyond. Allans ! we grow 
tragic because of remembrance. We have a 
maniac where I should have left a corpse. The 
one is harmless as the other.” 

‘‘When you were last in Spain, what did the 
brothers of the order say that have his charge ” 

“ That the wound had crushed upon his brain 
in such a fashion, that to dream of its regaining a 
normal state was madness great as his.” 

“And that they had had many cases more — ” 
she prompted, as in an oft-told story. 

“Yes, as in many cases more, when only death 
relieved the ravings of vacant minds, more lucid, 
perhaps, just before the quiet, but never clear, or 
bearing faintest evidence to warrant a release.” 

“Then watchfulness, iron doors, even a lost 
semblance of himself, make safety trebly sure. 
You say that he is changed } ” 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


1 16 

“Yes, changed so that even I, who, unhappily, 
knew him quite too intimately for the good of my 
estates, must needs have him pointed out by the 
brother who served my guide. Groping there 
among the straw like some wild beast, and calling 
for and cursing her by turn. They know no name 
but that we gave them. He mutters and snarls 
until all our acumen could never get it straight, 
not taking into consideration the fact that their 
simple ignorance is so far cut off from all the 
world that even a whisper of its turmoil never 
finds them. Yet, to make assurance still more 
sure : — Here is a paper ; it contains a secret which 
affects the honor of our house, and should a fear, 
impossible of realization, come to pass, then open 
it, and you will find a might to wield which will 
dash from your life the bitterness that would 
assail it. If this need never come, or be removed, 
destroy the paper with unbroken seal, but guard 
it until then. Yes, you are safe. This is all folly 
to dream of other result. Now, dry your eyes, 
think only of your happiness, and if it adds some- 
what to know that I am with you, why I will stay. 
But do not let us speak of — Africa again, because, 
really, I begin to fear that that particular part of 
my heart which I fondly believed encysted, or 
broken from too hard usage, has begun to live 
again ; maybe on the principle that when one eye 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 117 

is blinded the other grows stronger. Come, let us 
look over these invitations,” he proposed in the 
most matter-of-fact way imaginable, proceeding 
slowly across the room to close the window, and 
when he had returned she had so far mastered all 
the unstrung threads of her emotion as to present 
an almost quiet face to his oft-recurrent, quick, 
questioning glance. For his sake listening, though 
sometimes it seemed but well-veiled pretence, to 
the names and fetes he read off quite composedly, 
as if their conversation had been all along of what 
they held or did not hold in store. 

Some hours later Prince Daggerhof, now also in 
Vienna, crossed the marble, tesselated entresol of 
a great palais aglow with lights and music that 
gleamed through the night, shedding in multiplied 
lustre and tone-ray in this ante-room upon the cold 
white busts resting on snowy pedestals which held 
aloft their semblance of a beauty vanished. Slowly 
he went from one to the other, hat in hand, as he 
paid a silent homage to some sculptured faces, 
faces that had beamed on him in years gone by, 
and lips that had lost curve in smile, now shut 
from sight and speech beneath a coffin lid below 
the altar of the Augustines. 

He turned abruptly, sighing, to catch sight of 
Natalie Zaprbny’s smiling countenance and out- 
stretched hand, that bade him welcome, a welcome 


1 1 8 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

warmly echoed by her husband, upon whose arm 
she leaned. 

“We have our warmest congratulations to add 
to greeting,” was her smiling announcement. 
“You have aided Prince Michael nobly, and I 
trust he rests the more securely on his throne for 
this grand vindication.” 

“ I have but just left him,” came the equally 
smiling rejoinder, “perfectly embarricaded in a 
mass of flowers, cards, and telegraphic congratu- 
lations ; his ante-room crowded to suffocation with 
ardent admirers awaiting access to his presence.” 

“ All to tell him, doubtless, as they did one 
Charles the Second of England, that they had 
been so eagerly awaiting his re-accession as to 
make him almost think it entirely his own fault 
that such a step was rendered necessary,” put in 
Zaprony, joining in the Prince’s tone of mood. 

“ Exactly ; and only yesterday these same en- 
thusiasts were ready, like a pack of wolves in the 
white steppes, to tear his heart out and feast 
through his woe,” returned the other grimly, 
causing a shudder to creep upon the Countess, 
which her husband remarking, chided him for 
awakening. 

“You speak only the truth, mon prince ^ and 
need no forgiveness,” she said, when he would beg 
her pardon ; “ I turned but a moment to the mem- 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 119 

ory that all pictures bear a reverse, and most 
happy is he who can hold that reverse forever 
past and done, as with Prince Michael is, I trust, 
the case.” Though for all this she clung still 
closer to her husband, as they ascended the grand 
stairway, heavy with odor of rare exotics and 
waving wilderness of fronding palm above the 
gleam of marble. 

As they reached the landing Prince Daggerhof 
sighed and turned to take a final, lingering glance 
at those silent faces below him, wondering, as 
silently, if the reverse of his picture had not now 
crept on, an age which held remembrance instead 
of hope, existence instead of living. But presently 
the crash of music, the misty glimpse of swaying, 
animated youth and life about him, lost vain 
rememberings in brilliant repartee; from none 
more brilliant than Natalie Zaprony, until he was 
remindful of her mother, Cleopatra Varasov, and 
her gay rejoinder that had held at bay a barbed- 
tongued court. — Natalie, radiantly beautiful as 
she swept through the splendid maze of the 
cotillion, wrapped in her husband’s arms. The 
voice of the violins sighing and bending above 
them, filling the air as with perfume of roses, 
banishing care and the memory of sorrow, as a 
mist swept away by the sunlight. 



CHAPTER VII. 

JosEFFA was, together with the Princess of 
Bieberach, being solemnly bowled over the court- 
yard stones of the Burg to church. Not with 
the giddy flourish which distinguished Her High- 
ness’s equipage in its more worldly progressions, 
but a dignified, even majestic leisure that presaged 
a brisk gallop homeward, when all had been prop- 
erly ended, after the fashion of a military funeral ; 
for Her Highness’s coachman possessed an intel- 
lectual sense of the proprieties, echoing after a 
faint fashion, as is the wont of servicees, the 
breeding of his servicor ; while with an inherited 
and more profound propriety, the Princess her- 
self was holding a missal before her mouth for 
the purpose of concealing an alarming series of 
yawns, which she declared, with the same pro- 
priety, to be brought about by the fearful fresh- 
ness of the air at an hour, to her, designatable 
only as the dawn of the early martyrs. 

“But one must, my dear — and you will learn it 
more and more disagreeably as the time goes by — 


CLEOPATRA S DAUGHTER. 


2 


one must make sacrifices to keep abreast of the 
times, and once in a way I come to the ten o’clock 
sermon, which no doubt you will enjoy, to find out 
what has been added to or pruned from my personal 
faith since last I was there. For, in this wretched 
age politics and religion vie with each other in 
jumping about, though in all respect I must say 
that, in our circles, the latter is not nearly so 
active as the former, which unhappily cannot 
always be under our control.” 

Joseffa murmured by way of an assent, possibly 
alleviating, that the music was always very beau- 
tiful. 

“Yes, it is,” rather abstractedly; “at half-past 
twelve you shall drive around with me to enjoy it.” 

“But it begins at eleven,” interposed her hearer 
with increasing surprise in the interrogation, 
which had, by its close, conveyed her former 
meaning to the Princess, not given, like many 
people of her age, to particularly definating youth- 
ful queries. 

“ Ah ! you mean the church music ; possibly 
it is, to some. Indeed, now that you mention it, 
I remember hearing foreigners praise it ; but I 
never enjoy music in the dark, or toilettes, or 
anything, not being able to see ; though at the 
Musik Verein the concert is charming. They 
give a symphony or something ; I am sure it will 


22 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


be amusing; one’s friends always drop in. Speak- 
ing of friends, recalls to me that Count de Tocque- 
ville is looking far from well. Have you noticed, 
my dear.J* He looks, — well, really more decrepit 
than Prince Daggerhof, who is a good ten years 
older, del ! I am frightened myself. It cannot 
be that he is what impolite people call failing^ 

“ Madame,” cried Joseffa in wide-eyed astonish- 
ment mingled with genuine concern, ‘‘can it be 
that Monsieur le Comte is ill } ” 

“ Oh ! hardly that, my dear ; I am sorry to have 
startled you. I should have said growing, like all 
human bric-a-brac, needful of a little patching and 
mending. Perhaps he will go off to some baths 
or other, and get done up in mud and hotel bills 
until he is quite as good as new. And speaking 
of patching reminds me ; a little piece of advice, 
my dear, which I only give to those possessing 
my especial favor. Patching called it to mind. 
But first tell me, do you think I look well, not 
at all pinched, I mean, more than at the beginning 
of the season } Of course you could never tell 
from my complexion, Jeanette does me up so 
charmingly.” 

“Madame always looks charming,” summoning 
to her aid a tone that augured well for her own 
future success in those circles in which her aged 
friend glimmered on. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


123 


“ Ah ! you saucy child,” tapping her cheek 
with one kidded claw. ‘‘Now you shall know; 
it may prove helpful when you get married, 
as of course all girls do, sooner or later. I was 
very late myself, being quite plain — though I 
have improved — and having no dot but my 
tongue. When I got married, I foresaw a 
necessity which very few do, and I have, I feel, 
saved the happiness of some noble houses by it. 
Men never admire their own wives after they 
begin to grow old, unless, indeed, they them- 
selves grow blind. And the first place a woman 
is likely to show her age is, from here to here,” 
tapping Joseffa’s neck below one pink ear, then 
the soft ruffle at her throat ; “ and as Bieberach 
was very old himself, I knew it more necessary 
than ever to keep preternaturally young ; so, 
whenever he wanted to give me jewels, I always 
chose necklaces, until I had at least twenty. Dear 
old man ! how he used to laugh at what he called 
my fancy. But my neck is so long, and with them 
all on, I could wear the fullest kind of toilette 
with impunity. Heaven gave me my eyes, Jea- 
nette my complexion, and my husband my neck. 
But del! here we are at the Palace. What a mob ! 
They must have published a good programme 
yesterday. Now, my dear,” as she alighted with 
majestic deliberation, “follow me quite closely, 


124 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


and carry yourself as I do ; and may the sermon 
do you good, though, even if it does not, I feel 
that your morning has not gone unimproved.” 

With this she began the ascent of the grand 
stairway des Ambassadeiirs^ her head well erect 
and sombre train sweeping grandly after. Joseffa 
following, past the imperial guards aglitter in 
uniforms of red and white and gold with shining 
lictors, across the parquet floor of the ante-room 
and through the glazed door, swept wide ajar by 
a footman in gorgeous livery, into the presence 
of the King of kings. 

But here, in the soft glimmer of a mezzo-twi- 
light, so dear to the brushes of the old Italian 
masters, there crept a feeling of quiet peace into 
her heart that was not often there — a peace that 
lent the hope all would be well ; yielding a restful " 
sense of content, abstraction, rather than prayer, 
which trembled on her lips unknowingly. 

The sermon fell unheeded. She saw the sun- 
shine sifting in through the one great, lanced win- 
dow in a shower of color that trailed and floated 
on, like flowers upon a lake of shadow, shadow 
blossoming in its depths about the altar in rifting 
banks of white azaleas, which crept up, up in 
curves of snow until they met their flashing 
counterparts flooding through oak-groined fram- 
ing. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


125 


The silver angels above the tabernacle gleamed 
faintly as their wings touched in a haze of rose 
and amber. The sweep of glazed galleries, on 
either side, lost themselves in high-reaching, trem- 
bling gloom that held one instant preciously a 
jewel of light, to drop it down, down, through 
the reflectant shadow. 

Candles, in great silver candelabra, ranged a 
stately array on either side of the high altar, 
flickering and gleaming aloft in answer to the 
gold-clasped tapers before the Emperor’s gallery, 
indistinct, shadowy ; while in quaint, shield-like 
sconces, discolored, brazen, waxen rays, trembling, 
irregular, set two and two, brought out the 
darkness. 

Above, in the topmost gallery, hidden but for 
a few stray gleamings, the violins were sighing 
out the prelude to the Kyrie. A clear, sweet 
voice, a boy’s throbbing, thrilling soprano, crept, 
then clove, through the darkness; up through the 
flowers of light, lost in the shadow, trembled and 
fell like a heart pleading mercy withheld not. 
The chorus bearing, supporting, on wings of mel- 
ody higher and higher, until at last it burst at 
the very gate of heaven, in a wild, ecstatic Glo- 
ria. 

A fanfare of trumpets, and the statuesque guards, 
glowing and golden, with drawn swords presented, 


26 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


wheeled right about face, to be relieved by others 
as stately. 

Then the organ and chorus fused with the 
mighty melody of the orchestra, floating beneath 
a rushing and trembling arpeggii of harp strings, 
that fluttered and quivered until the air seemed 
filled with a haze of glorified splendor, like sun- 
shine sudden and blinding bursting on shadow. 

Again the sweet, wistful tones breathed out 
the Agnus Dei's pleading, another wave-burst of 
sound, and the missa was ended. 

“ My dear,” came from the Princess Bieberach 
tragically, “ my feet have gone to sleep ; give me 
your arm, I beg.” And thus abjured, Joseffa 
assisted Madame to arise, awakened quite sum- 
marily from a dream of Kurd’s blue eyes, dark 
and pleading ; a dream which vanished to leave 
tear-drops trembling full on her lashes ; tear-drops 
still faintly visible when Count de Tocqueville 
met them, quite unexpectedly, descending the 
stairway, 

“Ah! Count, I have just been praying for you 
with such fervor that both my feet went to sleep.” 

“Madame, you fill me with distraction to think 
that I have been the cause of such inconvenience, 
though perhaps it was the unusualness of the 
event, equally with the fervor, that caused your 
discomfort.” 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


127 


“Count, Count ! Is it possible that I hear you 
voicing such sentiment in the presence of a sweet 
young creature whose mentor I have quite consti- 
tuted myself. If you wish to accompany us in 
our enjoyment, you must behave differently.” 

“ It depends vastly upon where that .enjoyment 
leads before I can promise any accomplishment.” 

Mtisik Verein” 

“ Mon DieUy when I stay away from church 
simply because my nerves will not bear the 
noise.” 

“You seem to sit out the cotillions charmingly.” 

“But dance music is only hilarious noise.” 

“Indeed, it is well that your nerves and tastes 
are so delicately balanced; now to me, one is just 
as bad as the other. But I embrace both, on the 
principle that the right is always the disagreeable.” 

“ Which in this instance I intend entirely to 
disprove,” he said gallantly, entering the carriage 
after them and waving his own coupe the home- 
ward signal. 

But his nerves were spared a prolonged siege of 
martyrdom that morning, the Princess finding one 
movement of a symphony amply sufficient for fur- 
ther diversion in fields of melody. There being, 
as she announced disappointedly, no one present 
with whom she cared at all to converse, except 
some stupid creatures who would never talk at a 


28 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


concert, though for the life of her she could not 
understand why, for conversation, from the accepted 
point of view, gained by accompanying commotion, 
which it politely strove to excel, a gentle impetus, 
a fictitious energy, bordering almost upon anima- 
tion. An animation not at all fictitious, which lent 
her tone, when, with thoughts of dejeuner , she 
ordered “ Home ” to the footman, as he closed the 
carriage door upon her friends’ adieu under the 
glazed cochere in Palais Zaprony court-yard. 

An animation finding no lodgment in Joseffa’s 
sad little face from like awakening prospect, for 
she had got to thinking of Kurd again, and de 
Tocqueville, having once before that morning seen 
faint signs of what he was pleased to denominate 
mal dn pays, asked her to drive with him shortly 
to Schonbrunn ; imagining a glimpse of the old 
palace gardens might recall a brightness now in- 
continently lacking, though he laughed to himself 
grimly, as they rolled thitherward, at what he nom- 
inated privately his fete bourgeoise. 

The sunshine swept down the long Mariahilfer 
Strasse, bringing into full silhouette the beautiful 
bridge with its carven portal, while just beyond, 
the palace, bearing long rows of fret-wrought win- 
dows, blinking, fiery, lay drowsing amidst a gar- 
den where naked, glistening branches, trim cut and 
lacing overhead, formed net-like traceries, shim- 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


129 


mering and vibrant against the fields of far-off, 
limpid blue, which smiled down tenderly upon them 
with brightest Austrian smile. During the drive, 
with a forethought rare to him, he had held her in 
conversation on things about them, or themes quite 
as foreign to her distant home, until, to his sur- 
prise — after they had sent the carriage on towards 
the Gloriette it was, and were slowly wending 
down the clipped allee which led to the menagerie 
— she announced quite frankly and in suavest 
tones that, for her part, she considered Vienna far 
preferable, as a place of residence, to Stuttgart. 
Clearly, her mournful condition must be due to an 
attachment other than of a purely local nature. 

The palaces, for instance,” he began categori- 
cally. 

Oh ! far finer. Do look at those pea-fowls 
chasing each other across the lawn.” 

Dc. Tocqueville, thus exclamatorily diverted, 
followed the direction of her eyes and was resul- 
tantly so lost in thought of a philosophic turn as 
to forget for some moments their bent of conver- 
sation. 

A gay bird, clumsily ambling on, no sooner 
raised aloft in pride the fan-like glory of its jew- 
elled plumage, than suddenly a rush, a whirl, 
kaleidoscopic flashings showing varied tint, and 
an envious birdling had wrought havoc with its 


130 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


radiance, to be in turn, and in like fashion ren- 
dered remorseful, until some, from long enjoy- 
ment of .each others’ company, looked sadly flayed, 
although the skeletonian remnant of their pride 
fluttered as vainly as ever to the chilly breeze. 

Had the Princess of Bieberach been present, he 
would at once, conversationally and unrestrainedly 
have pronounced them quite strongly remindful of 
society ladies enjoying themselves, barring indeed 
a slight incontrariety, inasmuch as many were more 
signally failing in characterial possessions than the 
raggedest bird of the lot. 

As it was, he merely thought it, to record for 
future pleasurable use, and turning to Joseffa, 
asked if she found higher enjoyment in living 
than artistic creation. Joseffa, hardly certain, 
remembered with vague phrasial ambiguity a 
group or two at Rosenstein which had struck her 
fancy. 

“Of course, of course, the Juno reclining is one 
of the superbest creations of an artist’s inspira- 
tion ; classic drapery, regal pose ; naturally you 
class that treasure of the collection among your 
artistic admirations.” 

Joseffa haltingly acknowledged that she had not 
observed it. 

“ Not observed it ! Why, when were you there ? ” 

“ Only lately ; we all went with F/aulein Putz, 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 13 i 

our governess, you know, who showed us every- 
thing. That is, the other girls saw everything ; 
I was with my cousin Kurd, for a part of the 
time.” 

“Ah! I see, not so energetic a guide as the 
Fraulein, possibly. You refer to that long-legged, 
rather plain young Uhlan, I suppose, von Palm ? ” 

“ I mean my cousin, the Second Lieutenant 
Kurd von Palm, whom I think very handsome ; his 
eyes are the most — I mean — blue.” Beginning 
with great dignity to end with great confusion. 

“Ah ! I see,” returned de Tocqueville, quite 
placidly, “ naturally your point of view as to 
masculine beauty would differ with mine, though 
doubtless liable to change as the years progress.” 
Forthwith proceeding, as placidly, to congratulate 
himself that her ma/ dii pays was likely of a char- 
acter more curable by method of absence than 
otherwise, congratulation broken in upon quite 
suddenly. 

“ I shall always consider him as worthy of my 
admiration as I now do, no matter if a cannon goes 
off under him and leaves him striped red and 
black across the face, like a Wiirtemberg flag, or 
General von Schwafelstein.” 

“ Of course you will, my dear, of course you 
will, and it is quite sweet and ladylike of you to 
say so. I admire the spirit extremely, I am sure. 


132 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


In war times it might prove a national benefaction 
if more liberally evinced.” 

“ I deem you very unkind, Monsieur le Comte de 
Tocqueville : I may be too young to understand a 
great deal, but a veiled sneer can hardly be placed 
in the category. I think we had better take the 
carriage for home,” and Joseffa lifted her head 
with a dignity even more imperial than that as- 
sumed by Princess Bieberach when sailing into the 
court chapel. Only she allowed herself a luxury, 
to Princess Bieberach unallowable under any cir- 
cumstances. Two tears trembled on her lashes, to 
make a flashing journey adown her rose-flushed 
cheeks. 

Forgive me, my dear, forgive me,” he pleaded, 
in a tone quite unused by him for some decades, a 
tone, though, to some extent dedicated to his own 
lamentable helplessness, there in the midst of a 
staring bourgeoisie^ multitudinous animals, which 
for the moment seemed gifted with equal curiosity, 
and a sunshine absolutely spring-like in its gleam- 
ings. For a space he actually forgot that his 
original intention of discovering her maidenly in- 
clinations had been gratifled to the fullest ; being 
rendered too anxious by the fear that her maidenly 
agitation, once let loose, might play with a fluvial 
abundance equal to the fountains which gave their 
present pleasure jaunt its cognomen. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


133 


But he found in this instance, as he had once 
or twice been surprised to find before, that Joseffa, 
though to a certain point quite in accord with 
young ladyish acceptance, was, beyond it, some- 
thing more womanly than many of them ever 
attain. 

Her eyes were quite dry now, and she quietly 
insisted that her preference was to return home 
at once, subject, of course, to his decision, which 
speech took with it such a tone of conciliatory 
agedness and necessitous veneration, that he won- 
dered, quite sincerely, if she stood at all in his 
debt. 

No, no my child,” with appropriate patriarch- 
ality, I could not think of such a thing. We will 
proceed at once to the Gloriette before returning 
homeward. It would be an everlasting reproach 
if you went back to Fraulein Putz and — ’’being 
about to add Kurd, but opportunely substituting 
the rest of them, without seeing Vienna from 
the Gloriette. They say it was built by Maria 
Theresa, who hated the city and came here to get 
away from it. Though why she should undertake 
an edifice from which one gets more of the town 
than if one were in it, I could never reconcile 
with the tradition.” Thus historically righted, 
they slowly ascended the stairway leading to their 
snowy destination, which rose, pale and sepulchral, 


134 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


against the fading east. The high tree-tops with 
their thick, waving branches had caught the sun’s 
late rays aslant, to hold as arrows in a quiver, 
shooting now and then a long slim shaft of glad- 
dening light far out on russet turf-swells, marble 
vases, gleaming statues, fountain spray tossing 
chill and pale in the shadow. Far away, beneath 
a cloud of misty vapor, rose the great city, grand, 
impressive, repellant, like a tomb holding secrets 
of ages, and bearing warning to those who with 
eager carelessness would venture intrusion. 

St. Stephan’s tower soared in the night mist 
creeping out from the eastward, grand and ma- 
jestic. 

Mighty with calm in the gloaming lay Vienna, 
while trembling out on the sea of quiet pealed the 
church bells; a flight of crows sailing homeward 
caught up the echo of tones softly jangled, to caw 
away westward. Dropping her eyes from them to 
her companion sitting beside her, she saw with 
affright that his head had fallen forward upon the 
balustrade railing, while a grayish pallor shone in 
his face, his eyes wide open, but sightless, and not 
a quiver of breath stirring his nostrils. 

She shrieked, but no one heard ; the gay groups 
had moved farther down on the broad terrace to 
leave her there alone, helpless. Hardly recking 
what to do in her terror, she chafed his hands, 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


135 


then, bethinking herself presently of her crystal 
vinaigrette, which, as she now remembered tear- 
fully, he had given her, bathed his forehead in eau 
de Cologne, and smoothed back his hair that the 
cold air might better play about his temples, 
having first rested his head on her shoulder. 

Directly^ a long, fluttering gasp, then another, 
and his eyes closed heavily, to open with a look of 
grateful, though dazed recognition. He motioned 
her feebly to reach for a phial in the breast of his 
greatcoat. Touching it to his lips he grew pres- 
ently better. Then, with an effort, resumed his 
position, beginning, brokenly at first, to thank her 
and gravely regret the fright he had given, the 
trouble he had unhappily caused her. “ O ! Mon- 
sieur de Tocqueville, it was nothing, nothing at 
all, I assure you. I am only too thankful to 
hear your voice again. I was so frightened just 
now when you failed to answer me. I thought 
maybe — ” 

‘‘ Maybe I was dead,” he said, quite calmly, 

“ I am sure I do not know exactly what I thought, 
only I clearly remembered that I had behaved 
very petulantly and ungratefully to you; and I 
hope you will forgive me as heartily as I am sorry. 
For you are so kind and good to me. Monsieur, 
and I am really very thankful to you, and fond of 
you, though I am afraid you never thought so 


136 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


from my behavior, especially this afternoon and 
raising his hand she touched it lightly to her lips, 
then, half-confused at her own impulsiveness, drew 
her furs closely about her, and standing before 
him asked if he felt sufficiently recovered for her 
to leave him to signal the footman. 

“ No, not yet ; that is, I am much better now, 
quite well indeed ; the little indisposition has 
passed entirely. But sit down here again, I have 
something to say to you.” Looking into his eyes 
she saw a mist resting there, like the mist hang- 
ing over the city. 

It is I who should beg forgiveness, for it was 
very brutal of me to attack your feelings; only 
with me, child, observation and experience have 
brought so much that is false and changeful, that 
I looked upon you as like the rest, of the same 
clay, as it were. So let us forget it all, and as 
I am an old man, and not likely to live long 
enough to betray any one’s secrets, suppose you 
tell me yours. Perhaps I can help you before it is 
too late. I have done little good in the world, 
though I do not know but that I have less to 
regret than if I had done more ; for people are 
very ungrateful ; not you, my dear, no, no. And, 
even if you should prove like the rest, I shall es- 
cape. There, there, I did not mean to hurt you, 
really. It was only a cynical second-self that 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


137 


has grown so natural as to sometimes speak 
for me.” 

“ It is not that, Monsieur; but I fear from what 
you say your days with us will not be long, and 
that the world has not treated you kindly ; though 
I am sure you always seemed so very scornful and 
gay, as if nothing were worthy your consideration; 
that is, until you were so good to me, and indeed, 
indeed. Monsieur, I am very thankful to you, and 
I hope you will show your faith by not talking of 
leaving us.” With these last words, spoken more 
slow and brokenly, she began to cry softly. 

“Joseffa, little one, do not grieve. Death holds 
not a tithe of terror for me that does ennui ; be- 
sides, I look upon it differently from youth, as 
possibly holding the cheerfulness of a sensation. 
There, there, forgive me. I shock you with these 
glimpses of what you term ‘scornful gayety.’ May 
you never have to learn the moods that breed it. 
But tell me, just as if I were going on a distant 
journey, never to return, and not likely to meet 
any one whom I could tell more than he knew 
himself, whether this cousin has a claim upon 
your heart that you would consent to grant V 

Joseffa’s handkerchief swept away her tears, 
but not her blushes. 

“Yes, a little; that is, we are both poor, and I 
told him it was better to forget, to go and win a 


138 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

name and fame; not to think of me, that he 
would, of course, forget me as he should, and — ” 
with a little gasp — “I succeeded in making him 
think I didn’t care for him one bit, and oh ! I am 
so very — very afraid — he will believe it all.” 
Here a burst of tears veiled from her sight the 
grim smile which lit de Tocqueville’s face — a 
smile in no wise engendered by the lesson she 
had read him. 

“So you are willing to go on living and give 
him up, because to let him love you would be to 
yield an aimless life ? ” 

“Just that, Monsieur.” 

“ While you will marry some one else.?” 

“No, no, never!” very indignantly. “I told 
him, just to make him hate me, that I would 
marry a rich old man, and when he died, then, 
maybe, I might marry him. But I didn’t mean 
it, oh I not a bit.” A gleam had crept into de 
Tocqueville’s face while she spoke, to fade with 
her last words, leaving it impressionless as before. 

“My child, I thank you for your confidence. 
You shall never regret it. You and Kurd will 
yet glean days of happiness together ; leave 
all to me. Hush ! say nothing : such bravery 
merits a reward greater than it may find a possi- 
bility to yield. But we shall see. Now, let us 
signal the coachman. Pray give me your arm. I 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


139 


am a little shaken up yet, it seems ; though, re- 
member, not a word of my attack to the Countess 
Zaprony; it might cause her uneasiness.” 

This last a little bitterly, as the two together, 
a young budding life and an old one far spent in 
declining, passed homeward in quiet and the 
gloaming. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Back at Regolstein again in the sunny weather, 
the great horse-chestnuts in the long allee full 
laden with a surging sea of blossom,, waves of 
pink and waves of white commingling, until they 
melted and hazed in the middle distance with the 
tall pine forest which swept on in grim phalanx to 
Tubingen, fading a misty azure where its wav- 
ering outline crept into the blue of the horizon, — 
a horizon arching grandly back across the mighty 
landscape sparkling and smiling in the flood of 
light that flowed between. 

Down on the terrace, under a silken canopy 
spread Chinese fashion over bamboo framework, 
gay with swaying tassels, flashing color, sat the 
Countess Natalie, making a little feint at tapestry 
embroidery that shared but small meed of glance 
with the tender landscape stretching to view. 

Below the stone balustrade of the terrace, on 
which a group of jewelled pea-fowl swayed and 
fluttered, the hill swept steep and rock-gorged to 
a torrent full swelled by early rains, dashing its 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 141 

feathery foam-plumes upon a jagged, green-fretted 
outline. Beyond, white church-towers rose clear 
against the spreading blue, bearing aloft to idle 
breezes their weather-cocks lazily turning; while 
overlooking all, and sweeping cloudward, uplifted 
the gray gargoyled curves and battlemented tow- 
ers of Regolstein. • Long rows of windows, lanced 
and mullioned, reflecting with a sleepy tolerance 
the warm, bright glowing sunshine, that spread 
a golden carpet, sifted to quick flitting tracery 
upon the flower-hung sward, and crept higher, 
higher, across the moss-grown sun-dial in the Park, 
until it lay in solid masses upon the shallow ter- 
race stair, towards which the Countess, lost in 
pleasant dreamings, turned often and expectantly, 
as if from thence would rise their culmination ; 
watched while the sun cast rosy shadows on the 
creamy fabric of her gown, flowing in long, 
clinging folds from Watteau drapery, misty with 
cascades of Mechlin that fell from throat to feet 
in filmy grace, half-revealing tiny red slippers, 
high-heeled as a Pompadour’s, which beat tattoo 
impatiently upon the yielding pile of Sikh rugs. 

“Ah ! here you are, mon ami^' she cried joy- 
ously, “ ten minutes later than usual ; but I will 
forgive you. I could forgive and condone a much 
more heinous crime on such a day as this, even 
though it were not an anniversary. Have you 
forgotten } ” 


142 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


“ Am I ever likely to forget ? The days that 
I hold golden in the calendar are marked by mem- 
ories such as these. I can see you now as if it 
were yesterday, coming down the long salon at 
Wilhelma that afternoon, in the cool mezzo-light 
shed from the high-set Moorish windows, all blos- 
soming in garniture of roses which seemed poor 
sisters to your cheeks. Yes, Natalie, and may 
its coming always be as golden as this sunshine 
— always as blossoming as this flower’s counter- 
part.” And bending his tall form above her 
sunny head, he took one long slender hand in his, 
and kissed it softly, clasping a winding coil of 
diamonds, fashioned like a blooming rose branch, 
leaf and blossom, about her full-moulded wrist. 
She leaned backwards, putting both arms lightly 
around his neck — arms that escaped in glowing 
symmetry their falls of lace, — and drawing his 
dark face close to hers, kissed him her thanks 
that words would poorly utter. Then, still with 
her hand in both his own, they sat together silent 
in the sunshine, lost in sweet memories of a day 
again recurrent in a sweet perfection. 

“ It seems to me,” she began presently, speak- 
ing slowly in a tone half-thought, half-utterance, 
that the music of that afternoon has never left 
off singing, like a theme woven in and out the 
poem of living and loving, a poem only to cease 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


143 


with our being, a poem that floods all our souls 
with its -sunshine, making being a paradise, our 
earth a heaven.” 

“ A heaven soon to be invaded by outside bar- 
barians,” he added, sighing a little. “ I would be 
content to live on thus forever, alone here with 
you ; but still, if you wish it, I am glad, glad as 
you know me always to be in fulfilling your desires, 
though I selfishly regret the moments which they 
claim you from me.” 

Ah! you are but a man,” she returned laugh- 
ingly. “If you thought yourself fated to the 
future you just now pictured, you would be longing 
for, at the end of a month, quite as fervently as 
you now disrelish, the idea of outside barbarians. 
No, no, do not interrupt me ; you know I am but 
jesting, and in one short month we shall be alone 
again at Zaprony ; and in the midst of those wild 
Hungarian mountains even our dearest friends 
will cease to trouble us. Though, for my j^art, I 
think a constant round of society but relieves our 
own happiness by a background of observation 
which shows so little, making me ever mindful of 
my present. In the meanwhile, let us enjoy this 
last hour before their arrival, this hour with its 
sunshine and springtime, as if it were to last for- 
ever. After all, what is the philosophy of happi- 
ness and the happiness of philosophy but that 


144 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


which is now, in this moment, not the last, neither 
the one to come.” 

“ But if the moment be an unhappy one ? ” 

“Then it is past, bringing only its short burden, 
neither anticipation nor retrospection ; but we 
have nothing to do with these. Why to me, to- 
day, ill seems a non-existing force — a force put 
away from this world of sunshine into another 
sphere, where ice and faint-reflectant moons, not 
light and flowers, enthrone it. Ill is the night of 
the heart — joy its day.” 

“ A day trebly bright as a fete day. Do you 
know that to-day I feel like going down into the 
valley to seek for some poor soul on whom poverty, 
that winter of the heart, has sunk, and make it 
springtime, as we have it here.” 

“ In the meanwhile the day would be gone, 
and when night came you would have, not your 
own, only his to remember. Let such things 
fall to those whose hearts bear no fruit like ours ; 
those whose only blossoming is in the lives of 
others. We have no need of that. If to-night 
the whole world were to sweep down into oblivion, 
leaving only you to me, I would awake as happy 
as I did to-day. I know some good moralists 
would call this love terrible, and say that such 
devotion would bring its own curse. But I feel so 
truly, surely confident of your heart that only in 


Cleopatra's daughter. 


145 


death can come what they would call my punish- 
ment, a punishment that cannot come to us in all 
this light. Why do I fall upon such a thought as 
this ? ” she cried, shivering a little. I forget my 
own philosophy, and think.” 

A pained look crept into his face, a look brought 
about by recurrent reminder that so many of her 
day-dreams bore a minor tone of half-expectant, 
half-defied disaster, indefinite, yet always there, a 
death-mask tangled in the flowers. Two yellow 
butterflies fluttered up from the blossoms, quivered 
against the blue sky, then were lost in the tree- 
tops. 

^‘That is life,” she cried gaily; ‘‘life: what 
would to-day be to them with a thought of to- 
morrow ? — To-morrow that may hold a snare and 
chloroform, to be a grace to some good man’s 
collection, as I should be to some good moralist’s, 
for all my happiness.” 

“ And if the entomologist chloroformed but 
one ? ” he said, a little sadly, indefinably wrought 
upon, as was his wont, by all her sudden, changing 
moods. 

“ One, did you say ? ” she queried gaily. “ No, 
my friend, not one, but both ; see how they fly 
together, back again now, here on the railing ; see, 
this is their fate,” and raising the long sticks of 
her fan aloft she crushed ruthlessly down upon 


146 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


them, then lifted it slowly. One lay quite dead, 
a little heap of golden dust ; the other, with a wing 
torn and broken, fluttered painfully downwards 
over the rocks toward the water. Her eyes opened 
wide, her lips half-parted, a look of terror crept 
into her face, her hands, ever restless, worked 
havoc amid the old Mechlin. 

Zaprony, thinking her tender heart filled with 
compassion at wreck of a moment’s thoughtless 
folly, was about to offer solace in gay, bantering 
tone, holding forgetfulness, when she started sud- 
denly from her seat towards the edge of the ter- 
race and watched, with strained vision, the gray- 
green depths below. He took a place at her side, 
and, looking over, saw the poor butterfly floating 
painfully, wearily downward, lower and lower, 
until it swept away in the foam of the torrent. 

“Ah!” she cried, excitedly, joyfully, clapping 
her hands together, flashing the rows of diamonds 
in a thousand scintillant quivers. “ It is dead, it 
is drowned I ” Her face sparkling now as the 
bracelet. “ Do you know, I half-feared a bad 
omen ? They are dead, both dead together. I 
should have dreaded to see the sun set on such ill 
foreboding. But now, now I fear nothing. Come, 
give me your arm, let us take a turn here on the 
terrace. Not so, now I am happy. See how my 
bracelet shines and sparkles. We will go to the 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


147 


rose garden yonder, by Prince Eugene’s window, 
and gather some gloires de Dijon, that I may deck 
myself out as when first you saw me.” 

Together they moved slowly onward, arm in 
arm, under giant-stretching trees which bordered 
their pathway. She, hardly needing the shelter of 
her huge, lace-decked parasol, that lent a misty, 
creamy background to the faint flush of her face, 
lit with its tawny, glistening eyes, and the red 
gold of her hair. Her draperies clinging and trail- 
ing about her, a soft perfume, faint, intangible as 
her laces, creeping upward and swaying his senses 
in a dreamy, half-bewildering fashion, as of en- 
chantment. Enchantment only partly dispelled by 
her gay, pealing laughter, as she clustered upon 
her the long, trailing branches of rose bloom from 
bushes which swept a mass of color in and out, 
between the stone lions of the railing, a railing 
that ran along dizzy heights over which the roses 
hung and billowed, tempting Zaprbny to spring 
lightly past their barrier and shower a rain of 
petals down the steep, rocky pathway, far out into 
the sunny, sleeping valley. Then, laughing still 
with the joy and remembrance of that day at 
Wilhelma, they climbed the long stairway leading 
to the grand portal, passed under an archway of 
feathery palms and fern-trees, half-hiding armorial 
traceries. Down through a hall lit by great, 


148 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


lanced windows, bearing, entwined, escutcheons 
and flowers, ever blooming in colors of crimson 
and amber, streaming a wealth of tinted light upon 
armor and portraits ; on past a portiere of Cordovan 
leather, into a long salon, where flowers and pic- 
tures gleamed faint oases of color from out the 
cool, shadowy surroundings, made more cool 
and shadowy still by high-swung, silken awnings, 
which only half-concealed the glorious sweep of 
landscape spreading afar in valley and forest gay 
with the springtime. 

De Tocqueville, turning away from one of the 
windows, advanced to greet them, quite bright 
apparently, from thoughts which had so engaged 
his attention as to leave him unconscious of their 
presence, until laughingly made mindful of it. 

“ Bon joiir^ bon jotir^ Madame, a queen of roses 
gracing her fete day.” 

“ A day that brought me coronation,” was her 
reply, as she held aloft the token of its remem- 
brance to his view. While he pronounced upon 
the superb beauty of the gift, iced wine was served, 
and even as they lingered over it, discussing the 
coming of a gay throng of expected guests, now 
shortly due, the roll of carriage wheels came faintly 
to them betokening the earliest arrivals. Without 
awaiting their announcement, the Countess, close 
followed by Zaprony, hastened to greet them in 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


149 


the flickering radiance of the great hall, and 
hardly had the Princess Bieberach awakened shrill- 
toned echoes on the grand stairway, than the 
Baroness von Pappenheim-Waggenheim made her 
appearance, accompanied by Joseffa, who turned a 
lingering glance down the long avenue, now glis- 
tening and glinting with swift-rolling equipages 
and the azure and argent of the Zaprony liveries. 

“But, my dear,” cried the Baroness, somewhat 
out of breath because of admiratory explosion 
regarding her friend’s latest enrichment, “ you 
have no idea what good it has done me to congrat- 
ulate some one else. For a whole week I have 
been literally smothered in letters and visits, until 
one would think I was about to marry off all five 
of my daughters, instead of only one.” Before 
the Countess could form a laughing rejoinder, the 
Baroness von der Weide, and half-a-dozen others, 
just in by the Vienna express, made affectionate 
onslaught, quite exhausting the vocabulary of fem- 
inine attachment, although several of them had, 
quite as volubly, and with even more industry, 
exercised the rich vocabulary of feminine expletive 
for some hours previous upon the present object 
of endearment, because of her residence so dis- 
tant from a point rendered the immediate centre 
of civilization by their presence. 

“ Ah ! Madame von Pappenheim-Waggenheim, 


150 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


I can imagine your sufferings,” condoled de 
Tocqueville, quizzically viewing the scene of affec- 
tionate outpourings ; “ but courage, courage. It 
will, in all probability, soon be done with, for I 
have ever noticed that matrimony, like death, on 
once getting into a family, generally decimates 
it.” 

“ Well, do you know that you almost echo what 
I said to Joseffa this very morning, though not 
in your horrible French way, that as she had 
always brought home every youthful disease, down 
, to the measles, giving, as it were, things a start 
both ways in the family, I really did not feel as 
badly at her marrying, under the circumstances, 
as most mothers might ; now that I feel assured, 
positively assured, that Kurd did not get his 
money by gambling.” 

Would a matter of that kind so prey upon 
your moral responsibility ? ” queried the Count 
blandly, well remembering some continental expe- 
riences at Baden-Baden with the late Baron, when 
his own finances had been decreased in inverse 
ratio with Madame’s season. 

“Not at all, not at all ; only, if he had gotten 
it in that way, he would very soon part with it in 
like manner. But I called at his bankers, and 
everything is quite correct and proper; how, I 
have no idea, because books puzzle my head so. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 15 i 

But he gave me a look at them and I feel quite 
easy.” 

“I fear your career as a mother-in-law will not 
be smooth sailing, as a quintuple experiment, if 
you begin by trying to prove the assertions of 
your acquired charges, Madame.” 

Ah ! my dear Count, it is only with prelimin- 
aries that I feel obliged to concern myself, and 
that wild, impossible story of Kurd’s regarding 
some wretched old creature who was about to die, 
and all that, filled me with alarm and distrust. 
It was so odd, so peculiar. For no matter how 
piously inclined people may be, the older and more 
righteous they grow, the more they are opposed to 
giving up their money and going to heaven. But 
I have had a look at the books, and feel quite 
easy.” 

“Possibly,” said de Tocqueville, smiling one of 
his slow, quizzical smiles. “Their inability to 
obtain the same gratifying assurances of certainty, 
so favorably granted you, may have something to 
do with the shrinking ardor of their aspirations.” 

“ Ah ! ” said the Baroness, feelingly, “ with the 
trials some poor parents are subjected to, any 
uncertainty would be preferable to the certainty 
vouchsafed them. Look at poor Scheidermantel.” 

“Von Riider’s fiancee! ” 

“By no means, I am speaking of parents.” 


152 . Cleopatra’s daughter. 

I should rather imagine, from my cold, un- 
parental point of view, of course, that of these 
destined relatives, his wife is the one deserving 
largest share of conversational sympathy.” 

“His wife Nothing of the kind. After sav- 
ing and nipping his very life-blood for about forty 
years, making candy, or something to get his 
children started in life. Here comes von Riider.” 

“ Only forty years of toil you would place in the 
balance, Madame } ” queried de Tocqueville. “ In 
that case I must revoke my misplaced sympathies. 
They are von Riider’s totally, entirely. Hardly 
indeed has he won the reward which good Schei- 
dermantel offers with his offspring.” 

“ I should have explained more fully, this is one 
of the third wife’s children. The others are all 
settled. But it really seems that Providence has 
saved the worst until the last, as so often hap- 
pens.” 

“ The most disagreeable remedies, both in morals 
and medicine, are oftenest the best. Perhaps the 
result is salutary.” 

“ Indeed, the only result, so far, has been equally 
disastrous to his pocket-book and temper. Von 
Riider, after getting more than all the others put 
together, and positively assuring his father-in-law 
that the last debt was extinguished, started off on 
the wedding tour. Three days later in came bills 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


53 


to the extent of forty thousand marks, which must 
be paid or find him cashiered or something or other. 
Of course, after investing all that, it would never 
do to have it count for nothing, so he had to pay.” 

“ But he has a son-in-law from one of the oldest 
families in Europe, which must be fine consolation. 
Rather finer than poor von Riider’s, at paying so 
dearly for enjoyment all past and gone.” 

Ah ! Count, it does well enough to moralize, but 
from either a parental or a plebeian point of view 
it is toilsome enough to get your children provided 
for, let alone the toil of providing.” 

While Joseffa’s mother was dilating upon the 
theme of parental affection, Joseffa herself was 
receiving some highly appropriate matrimonial 
advice from the Princess Bieberach, by whom 
she had been thankfully rescued from the midst 
of a conversational whirlpool, in which compli- 
ments were showered with flattering impartial- 
ity upon her own good fortune and the beauty 
of Baroness von der Weide’s French poodle- 
Come with me, my dear ; who would have 
thought such a little while ago, when we were 
driving to church together, and I giving you 
so many good maxims, that you would be called 
upon to put them into practice. Doubtless a 
reward for your devotion. I never thought of 
praying for a husband for you myself, not kneeling 


154 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


at all comfortably. But I suspect you did. Most 
good girls do. There, there, don’t blush. I am 
sure it was very proper and ladylike. Now come 
with me away from all this chattering mob ; I have 
something far more entertaining than they in my 
apartment,” and together they ascended the long 
stairway, Joseffa stopping, now and then, to catch 
a faint glimpse, through some storied lattice, of 
wide-stretching, blossoming plains, until, at last, 
they reached the suite allotted Princess Bieberach. 

“Now, Joseffa,” with very weighty mien, as 
Jeanette, the facial artist, handed her a velvet 
jewel etuiy for which they had been waiting, the 
Princess in an expectancy best described as 
breathless, and she in mild wonderment, “here 
is something I wish you to wear for my sake, not 
to mention the conjugal felicity it may sustain. 
This is one of poor Bieberach’s necklaces,” dis- 
closing to view a superb banci of seed pearls, set 
rosette fashion. “ It is enougi to make one ill 
to see the way women go about now-a-days, with 
their necks done up in black velvet bands, like the 
hats of their footmen, and I determined that you 
should never have the excuse for presenting such 
a spectacle. I always took an interest in you, my 
dear, even when you had no affaire de coeiir!' 

“ O ! Madame, I can never think of it ; really 
it is too grande dame for me. I am sure, posi- 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


155 


tive, that Kurd would always care as much for 
me with this little knot of his colors at my throat, 
as if it were bound in diamonds.” 

“Tut, tut, child; of course he would, now — 
anything satisfies a man before marriage and 
nothing after. Remember what I say and accept 
this evidence as a reminder ; nature is all well 
enough, but a day comes in the history of each 
one of us — to some sooner, some later — when art 
has to come to its assistance. Now, poor Bieber- 
ach, if he could only look down, or up, from wher- 
ever he is, how surprised he would be ! Most 
probably not recognize me at all, for I have im- 
proved so, thanks to that wonderful creature 
Jeanette. But there is the gong for dejeuner ; let 
us descend at once, for no art will restore the 
vanished beauty of a chefs productions once 
grown cold, del!'' as they reached WiO, grande 
^tage ; “I positively refuse to be bored into pre- 
mature senility by that wretched old de Lune- 
ville,” — a personage already upon them, and 
bowing with a courtesy suave and Gallic. 

“ Madame la Princesse, radiantey Parisienney 

“ Thanks, Monsieur le Gdnerale,” with a sweep- 
ing obeisance ; “ I am, I know, naturally radia7itey 
but only Parisienne so far as my maid pleases. 
I have small ambition to be accredited to a 
town whose great men are all foreigners, though 


156 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

as individuals I find them charming, I assure you. 
Here comes one now. Count de Tocqueville, 
your arm,” and sweetly, serenely smiling, she 
escaped a doom into which a greater amiability 
would have inevitably plunged her, leaving poor 
Joseffa in a state of semi-paralysis, as direct effect 
of the scene she had been forced to witness be- 
cause of a blockade caused by polite haste to gain 
the breakfast room ; though she presently man- 
aged, after some difficulty, and repeated effort, to 
reach her mother’s side ; but not until old Gen- 
eral von Schwangelstein, by no means so unwill- 
ingly detained, had chuckled himself quite blue 
in the face ; a proceeding which increased the 
already respectable proportions of General de 
Luneville’s rage, until his teeth, being equally 
adjustable with the Princess’s politeness, rattled 
like castanets. 

“ How frightful ! and at her age,” chattered the 
von der Weide, “openly forcing herself upon de 
Tocqueville’s attention.” 

“ Not at all, my dear ; they are desperate 
friends. I hear that .in prehistoric times he pro- 
posed to her, but Bieberach carried her off on his 
title.” 

“ Perhaps a feeling of gratitude at blessed escape 
dictates present devotion.” 

“Most probably, ma Mre^ though I would not 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


157 


say so in her hearing for worlds ; she has such a 
tongue,” returned the Princess Ostrande solici- 
tously, steadfastly determining on her first oppor- 
tunity to repeat the scene, with deviatory embel- 
lishments, and witness prophesied results, which, 
when they came to pass, quite exceeded her most 
sanguine expectations. 

Thus the procession trailed onward until the 
heavy portieres dropped together, to open, after 
a considerable season and admit the egress of 
more amiability than they had closed upon. The 
guests scattered, some to the music room, whence, 
now and then, little fragments of chansoiiettes 
floated gaily, to mingle with laughter as gay 
from picturesque groups on the terrace, smoking 
cigarettes of Turkish tahac and sipping Russian 
tea from tall crystal beakers, glistening amber 
with sifted sunshine, — a nineteenth century 
Watteau. 

In the picture-gallery, resting upon luxurious 
divans, beneath a flood of mystic, tempered light, 
shed through high-set windows, a merry party of 
cosmopolites interchanged the chronique scandal- 
euse of Algiers, Monte Carlo, Nice — every quar- 
ter of the globe but their own original one. Con- 
spicuous among them shone the white-crested 
head and kindly blue eyes of Prince Daggerhof, 
who, together with his nephew Waldemar, was, 


158 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

quite as solecism, not in from Paris; but his home 
estates. 

Neither one, however, could catch more than a 
bright, unsatisfactory glimpse of conversation with 
the Countess Natalie, who passed animatedly 
from group to group, leaving here a smile of wel- 
come, there a sunny recollection of some bygone 
remembering. Decked still with the clustering 
gloires de Dijon, which blossomed and trailed in 
pink, waxy fragrance along the outline of her 
bosom that evening, when the liquid tones of a 
great tenor swept out on the wings of the moon- 
light, and hushed the gay babble to silence — 
babble to break forth afresh, until the small hours 
had been tolled from the church in the village. 



CHAPTER IX. 

The shadowy castle rose into the misty silver 
of the night, flecked and outlined with tiny, flash- 
ing balls of fire which swung, multiform in color 
and array, from base to battlement. 

Down in the park, in chain of red and yellow, 
Chinese lanterns swayed thick with the pink and 
white flowers of castaneas, while Venetian masts 
swept skyward, bearing lines of flaming, vacillat- 
ing color above the stone lions of the terrace, 
sleeping in a frozen silence upon beds of trailing 
roses, roses that filled all the air with a perfume 
heavy, and mingling with music as sensuous which 
swept out on the night wind. A great ball was in 
progress. For hours the roll of carriage wheels 
had filled the long avenue leading to the grand 
portal, where silken awnings, crimson carpets, 
servants in gala livery, made a flame of color 
reflectant in flambeaux, gleaming and serpentine, 
flashing from iron-wrought standards fixed in the 
blossoming stone of the stairway. Within, glis- 


i6o Cleopatra’s daughter. 

tening and glinting beneath chandeliers of crystal 
laden with tapers, floated the sheen of silks, 
jewels, and velvets, glittering uniforms, gold bul- 
lion and bright-starred decorations, as a tone-burst 
of music pealed forth in rhythmic exultance like 
the song of the birds in the sunlight. 

Waldemar Daggerhof, who had been dancing 
almost without intermission, stood for a moment 
just beyond the long rows of red-covered fauteuils 
encircling the dancers in the great ball-room, half 
lost in a fit of abstraction arising from excess of 
pleasurable excitement, when suddenly, raising his 
eyes, he caught the smiling glance of Countess 
Zaprony, who beckoned him a little with her huge 
bouquet of creamy roses. “ Come, come,” she 
cried gaily, as he approached, ‘‘ no moping ; every 
moment must be so radiant that my ball will be 
brightly remembered as a hal des bals, even by 
those who have waltzed to the cadence of all 
climes. Though I will fairly admit that to-night 
your court to the debutantes of three cities has 
filled me with respect for your Terpsichorean 
powers. Now, as reward, carry my roses and 
give me your arm to one of the balconies. I feel 
the need of a breath of fresh air.” While he mur- 
mured his thanks for the distinction bestowed, 
they moved slowly onward, lingering here and 
there for a moment at will of the Countess, who 


Cleopatra's daughter. i6i 

left in her wake a ripple of smiles because of some 
bright moti or gay bit of raillery, as they passed 
on towards the music room, filled now with ani- 
mated groups, industriously coquetting behind the 
faint screen of fans storied by Bouchat or Rene, 
which ceased for a moment their flutter to wave a 
bright recognition, as the Countess and Walde- 
mar proceeded to a low, light-flooded balcony, 
designated her choice ; remembering suddenly, 
with comical dismay, as she sank upon a bamboo 
divan, the lack of her chief est source of refresh- 
ment in this restful moment snatched from hospi- 
table duties incumbent — her fan had been for- 
gotten. Bidding him fetch one, for the night had 
grown heavy and sultry, he left on his mission with 
her bright laughter echoing a gay deprecation at 
what she termed her * feminine sense of employ- 
ment,’ — laughter which lost itself presently in a 
little sigh of half-tired enjoyment, as she looked 
out at the fairy land jewelled and sparkling be- 
neath her to fade into background of shadow, 
black as that marked by the light flood in which 
she rested. The sad, sobbing waltz from Galathee 
crept out on the night, to rise and fall in little 
gusts, upborne by a breeze from the foam-sprin- 
kled ravine, rushing in sharp, chilly gasps, that 
turned to pale, ghostly silhouettes the rows of 
tall Lombardy poplars, shivering their silvery lin- 


1 62 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

ings against a black sky, cloud-robbed of moon- 
beams. A man, standing in the shadow, watched 
her as she looked up at the darkling night, then 
down at the whispering valley ; watched her as 
she drew a light wrap across the gleam of her 
shoulders ; saw her shiver a little at chill of the 
night wind uplifting the waltz’s monotonous ca- 
dence, then slowly arise, looking about with half- 
troubled gaze at the blackness fluttering around 
her, putting out with its breath, or half-dimming, 
the gleaming of lanterns. 

All the while he crept noiselessly, stealthily 
nearer, until the sharp crashing of twigs on the 
terrace told of a footfall approaching, causing her 
to turn as she was about entering the now-deserted 
music-room, with strained, half-startled gaze towards 
the railing, and, as the light gleamed faintly upon 
him, to hold out both hands and call softly, “ BMa.” 
The figure, emerging from shadow, came suddenly 
close to the balustrade, and there, for an instant, 
stood motionless in the glow of wax-lights stream- 
ing outward with glaring distinctness, which marked 
each feature white, clear, beyond all chance of mis- 
taking, as it rose from a hovering background of 
blackness. The Countess, transfixed, frozen, stood 
ghastly white, her tawny eyes starting with horror, 
her hands still outstretched but with palms slowly 
averted, as a dreadful trembling came on her. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 163 

making her powerless to articulate the one word 
her lips, convulsively forming, refused to utter — 
“ Narcisse,” as if a spectre had risen on wings of 
the night-time from out hot deep grave of the 
valley, — ‘‘ Narcisse."' Nearer and nearer his face 
crept to hers until his eyes, looking full in her own, 
with lids nerveless to shut out the horrible vision, 
smiled down in ghastly triumph at her agony, at 
the clammy sweat standing thick on her forehead. 
Then her trembling liaibs refused to support her, 
and she fell forward, half-kneeling, upon the low 
divan, her eyes fixed on his still, with a wild dis- 
believing, as if some vile apparition had crept on 
her waking. 

‘‘Madame 'la Comtesse Zaprony,” he said 
hoarsely through his shut teeth, grasping her 
wrists in a vice, and drawing her down close to 
the edge of the railing, closer and closer still, 
until his hot breath seared and burned like a flame 
on the ice of her forehead. 

“Madame la Comtesse Zaprony,” his voice 
filled with scorn and gloating derision. “ So you 
thought me done with. You, with your cursed 
virtue that brought me what you hoped my death- 
wound,” and relaxing the hold of one hand to 
grasp tense both with the other, he pushed up his 
long hair, disclosing a deep cicatrix running low 
on his forehead, then shook it back, scowling 


164 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


with wrath, as his breath came thick and fast 
through firm-shut teeth in fierce vehemence, awak- 
ened by rage, all unreasoning, which laid at her 
feet the blame of his life’s wreck. “ So you 
thought me done with, to reap disappointment ; 
to shut me up in a living tomb, trusting me hope- 
less. You, with your whining, that set de Saig- 
non on me to cut down my life and avenge 
outraged virtue. What are you now better than 
she.? What are you now but Zaprony’s mistress.? 
Faugh ! you need have no fear ; I will not claim 
you. Stay where you are, live on your charming 
idyl, but only on this one condition, that you give 
me now, to-night, the sum I deem sweeter than 
revenge. Unless you give word of fulfilment, I 
will go with you now, dragging you out before 
these fools and dupes, before the greatest of all — 
your husband. I will give the lie to all your 
cursed life, and drag you and your vile happiness 
so low in the dust that worms will be your only 
rescuers. Do you hear me .?” 

While he was speaking she had wrenched her 
arms free from his grasp, struggling fiercely with 
all her might, then dropped on the divan, shiver- 
ing, clutching and tearing at her gauze wrap until 
it lay in long ribbons about her feet, trembling 
still, unable to speak ; but suddenly realizing, with 
a flash which swept through her paralyzed brain. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 165 

that Daggerhof might come and thus find her, 
she strove to rise, motioning him off with both 
hands dumbly pleading, then fell back, her head 
with all its glorious mass of red gold drooping 
low on the coping ; the chill of the stone seemed 
to help her a little ; she tried to form words to 
coherent utterance, as he stood there, merciless, 
calmly smiling, gloating on the misery of death 
which he had brought upon her, deigning no word 
beyond what he had told her. 

. . will,” she began, brokenly, “do what . . 
you . . ask . . anything . . but for God’s sake,” 
shivering afresh, “ leave me now, quickly. I will 
meet you there . . at that window beyond, when . . 
the ball is . . ended ; go . . go, anything . . leave 
me,” as she heard footsteps echoing across the 
parquet of the music-room. 

Slowly he drew back into the shadow, with a 
deliberation that left the cruel scorn of his smiling 
triumph half-visible still in the blackness and 
shadow, as Waldemar’s quick steps sounded nearer. 

Yes, he was gone. With a gasp, almost a sob, 
she turned towards the open window, through 
which the young Russian sprang lightly to bend 
over her smiling. “ Madame la Comtesse, I beg 
your pardon for having — ” he began in a tone of 
gay deprecation, to abruptly cease in affright, as 
he caught a glimpse of her haggard, terrified coun- 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


1 66 

tenance, in which she was bravely endeavoring to 
frame an attempt at a smile that her eyes failed to 
reflect, even faintly, — eyes staring wide and burn- 
ing with a fixed tensity of gaze which made them 
wildly beseeching, as she sprang forward, catching 
his arm in both her hands in plea for protection. 

‘‘What has happened, Madame.?” he cried, 
thrusting himself between her and the railing, 
with one hand searching as if for his pistol, the 
other shielding, and pressing her in towards the 
window, looking keenly about in endeavor to pierce 
with his gaze the immediate blackness. 

“ Oh ! nothing, nothing. Monsieur,” she began 
uncertainly, attempting to draw him from the 
balcony into the music room, fearfully dreading 
lest he might distinguish the receding shadow of 
Narcisse, still dimly visible to her, but not to his 
light-dazzled eyes. “ It is nothing, absolutely 
nothing. Do you not remember,” with a pitiful 
attempt at lightness, “once, long ago, how you 
frightened me, talking of grass blades and dag- 
gers.?” Then suddenly, catching with pleading 
again at his arm, while a violent shivering racked 
her, she begged him to take her in out of the 
horrible darkness in a tone which conveyed only 
terror. On crossing the broad embrasured window 
leading to the music room, she turned from him 
a moment with eyes fixed on the black infinity 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


167 


beyond, seeming to gather a fierce, sudden strength 
from some fresh-awakened reminder ; a strength 
which gave vestige of her old mien, as she bade 
him, in a tone strained to quiet, deliberate self-con- 
tainment, get her some wine. 

“Get it yourself, please. Monsieur;” then, when 
he hesitated an instant, dreading to leave her alone, 
she continued, “I am no longer afraid ; as I said, it 
is nothing, a mere spasm of nervousness. Why do 
you not go as I bid you ? Go quickly,” she added, 
with chafing, increasing impatience which left him 
no choice, though he turned at the doorway, still 
reluctant, to see her pacing to and fro rapidly, pull- 
ing the roses from out her bouquet and scattering 
them thickly, as if in disdain of her weakness. 
Seizing the wine carafe from him, she filled to the 
brim a deep-bowled glass, and lifting it in her trem- 
bling grasp, drained it quickly, her teeth chattering 
against the crystal as she drank, then began her 
pacing again, unheedful of him. 

Directly she ceased abruptly, turning to him, on 
hearing the sound of a waltz floating out from 
the ball-room. 

“ Oh ! I had forgotten. Come, come ! This 
despicable weakness has made me even forgetful of 
my guests. We must return to the ball-room at 
once. I am quite well now. Forget all this child- 
ish emotion, this foolish caprice of nerves over- 


1 68 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

wrought with incessant round of enjoyment. Ban- 
ish even the thought from your mind. It would 
only cause my good friends anxiety where none is 
needful ; though I thank you sincerely, Monsieur, 
for see, you have cured me,” and turning upon 
him she smiled with a quick, determinate smile, 
as of one who, in facing some wild, inavertible 
danger, gives even death in derision. 

He ventured no word of comment beyond the 
conventional assurance, and waltzed a turn with 
her, as she bade him, beneath the white light of 
the ball-room, which gleamed on none more gay 
and unflagging than she, though at times her 
gayety bore trace of an animation almost forced 
in untiring prolongment, causing Zaprony, always 
watchfully mindful, to beg her, in tender concern, 
not excel even her superb strength in undue exer- 
tion to make her ball what it had already proven, 
in all that her ambition willed it, a bal dcs bals, 
even to those who had waltzed on the ice of 
the Neva, or under the moonlight in flower-hung 
courts to guitars of Sevilla. 

The last carriage had rolled away from the por- 
tal in gray of the dawning, a dawning rendered 
dim and slothful because of full-charged rain- 
clouds hanging heavy and pall-like, to mingle with 
mist trailing up from the valley. 

The house had grown still and silent, the gay. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 169 

pealing laughter and music were hushed, to leave 
shadowy gloom and a leaden, intermittent patter 
of raindrops, echoing heavy and dull upon the 
terrace. 

The Countess, still in her ball dress, with a face 
bearing only drawn, haggard misery instead of the 
gay masque of abandon so lately its guest of ex- 
pression, stole softly along the vast corridors, dim 
in pale, uncertain daylight, which lent ghostly pro- 
portion to shadow. 

Stole softly along through a great palace sleep- 
ing, to the wing containing Prince Eugene’s win- 
dow, a wing ever avoided, deserted, save in the 
broadest of daylight, and pushed on its hinges the 
massive door creaking suddenly, noisily, out on 
the stillness, awakening a shudder at memory of 
the fallen mirror and her affright when last she 
entered this grim storied suite. Hurriedly cross- 
ing the floor which bore, dimly traced, a shadow 
deeper than those hovering above it, she opened 
the window and peered out into the misty uncer- 
tainty. 

He was there in a moment, standing beside her, 
not wearing the angry scowl of impatience with 
which he had waited, but smiling a slow, scornful 
smile of gratified malevolence. 

“ Well, I am here,” she said, coldly, in a tone 
that bore clear to his ear the assurance that the 


I/O Cleopatra’s daughter. 

woman, just now cowed and humiliated with un- 
reasoning, terrified horror, had been replaced by 
one who, if not in actuality, at least in outward 
semblance, sustained no other feeling than cold 
contempt and scorn which held mastery. 

When she had spoken, he stood silent a, space, 
lost in contemplation, yielding quick change of 
expression, as of one reviewing long lapses of 
time in a flitting moment. “You have grown 
handsomer,” he said, presently, half in thought ; 
then, hearing his own words and grasping their 
bearing, laughed in sardonic derision at what he 
had been able to bring her. 

“You are here to obtain money, not pay com- 
pliments. Your presence under any circumstances 
is hateful enough to me. Proceed with your busi- 
ness.” 

Her words angered him. He strode a step 
nearer, catching her bare arm roughly. “ Be 
careful. In the past I was not what I am now. 
Every vestige of that shame which compels us to 
kiss when we would strangle, has been torn out of 
my nature, leaving instead a hate that could find 
no hell deep enough for the punishment of those 
who have brought on me this^ blight, making of my 
life a wreck greater than that of my body, as you 
left me, penned like a rat to die, and thus fulfil 
your fond hopings: Never more trouble you ; never 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 171 

to know of the happiness you had stolen in a world 
from which your cursed virtue had me hurled out. 
You and that jade de Saignon, whose life was a 
moral epic to yours in its double-faced lying and 
contempt of every law worldly and moral. 

“You thought yourself safe, my intellect a thing 
of the past, like my honor, that you could steal 
off with what was left of my wealth and impose 
yourself, a saintly adventuress, upon some dupe 
to your handsome figure and bearing ; a beautiful 
saint, with a heart as lying and black as that of 
your vile Russian mother.” 

She uttered no word in response to this rage- 
choked tirade, standing there in the vice of his 
grasp, scornfully smiling with a contempt that 
gave increase to the hatred which impelled his 
emotion, until he reached the climax of almighty, 
will-forced endurance of insult in reviling the 
name of her mother. Then her eyes flashed, she 
wrenched herself loose from his hold with a power 
that sobered his face in surprise, casting him from 
her with a force which impelled him staggering, 
then falling against the wainscot. Quickly ad- 
vancing again and blazing a wrath in her tawny 
eyes and quivering, bloodless lips and nostrils, 
which cowed him by its might and suddenness, as 
she stood there above him, recalling dimly to mind 
half-slumbering visions of angels and devils com- 


1/2 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

mingling in dreams of his madness, to curse and 
appall with the realm of their presence. 

“ Back, back, I tell you, out of my sight, away 
from my presence, or I will add murder to all these 
sins which you have brought on me. To think 
that the thing I now look on with loathing once 
wrung my heart almost to breaking. That I gave 
my young, spotless life to this hideous wretch who 
made sport of its faith and devotion, left my arms 
for those of the wife of another — who comes back 
now, resurrected from a grave dug by his own 
loathsome passions to try to put out the light of 
my life, which he only failed in wrecking because 
cut off by a timely vengeance ; who would revile the 
dead in her grave, and draw down her child’s blessed 
memories to his own grovelling level. Your for- 
tune ^ Ask that of your mistress de Saignon 
and her noble husband ; go to them for subsis- 
tence, rather than beg of one who gives you, not 
from fear, but contempt and loathing pity, that 
she may know, and hope, living will hold, does 
yet hold, tortures for you greater, 'deeper than 
death. I have in my power, yes, here, in these 
hands, papers given me by de Tocqueville, your 
uncle, notes forged in his name in the wild extrem- 
ity of your reckless squanderings, and a letter 
proving your guilt from Follet, the banker, — prov- 
ing your guilt, which was hushed for the sake of 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


173 


the name. A guilt causing you to creep here in 
the dark, fearful of justice, justice that would be 
a prison, for aught I know the galleys. Would you 
trouble me then.? The galleys mean freedom for 
me, death in life to you, greater than madness, 
because it holds understanding. 

“ The love that now gives me protection is mighty 
enough to grant me pardon, forgiveness. Your 
day, as a blot on my life, is done, extinguished 
forever.” While she spoke he drew himself slowly 
upward from where the force of her rage had cast 
him. Listening, first with ill-feigned indifference, 
then with unmasked emotion which was almost be- 
yond leash as he stood there quivering and writh- 
ing under the scourge of her wrath, — an emotion 
giving place to a great flash of exultance on hearing 
de Tocqueville had hushed up his guilt ; followed 
on close with a play of calm, ironical indifference 
which recalled the training of a diplomat, as he 
began in a strain, measured and studied, as if 
gathering words and ideas as he warily spoke 
them : — 

“You have papers ; well, what of that.? Prove 
that they are genuine, and not like this marriage 
of yours. The only witness is Follet, the banker : 
— he is dead. De Tocqueville I can face any 
hour with his criminal concurrence with you in this 
marriage, and shake his testimony beyond all hope 


174 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


of belief ; prove it a part of your plot to entrap 
Zaprony as prey and yield you the wealth of Alad- 
din. Come, I am no dupe, like your present 
spouse. Give me the money I ask and save your- 
self, not me, from a prison and death in life, of 
which you prate so freely. Like all women, you 
have always left a remnant of conscience never too 
dead to prick and twinge with misgiving. You 
must have the world of sensation to drown out its 
cryings, even in moments of bliss which cannot 
be lived out alone, nor yet with the aim of your 
dupings. Would society welcome you then, even 
though you held aloft his forgiveness ? Where 
innocence fails, would you triumph ? I am ready 
now for the money ; will you give it or not ? I 
wish to be going.” 

The look of triumphant excitement faded out 
of her face, as his words gathered force, until she 
stood now with an expression of misgiving and 
hope struggling hard for the mastery. “ How 
much do you wish } ” she questioned, coldly and 
curtly. 

“ A hundred thousand marks will suffice, for 
the present. Well, why do you hesitate } Make 
your own choice, though. Revenge in your down- 
fall would be dearer to me. Your — husband — is 
rich, bless his coffers. Dip into them for me by 
right of a prior attachment.” 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 175 

Again her eyes blazed forth in wrath. ** Have a 
care. I may yet give my hatred the mastery and 
bring us both down together, rather than see you go 
unpunished. Not one centime of his money shall 
be yours, that I promise. Here is the remnant 
left from your wretched thievings and squander- 
ings, which I have always kept safe in my jewel 
case, disdaining, even when I knew less, the inter- 
est that otherwise it would have yielded. Take it, 
and go.” He drew a step nearer, she involuntarily 
recoiling from him, dropping the roll of thousand 
mark notes into his outstretched palm, as one 
would give alms to a leper, forgetting, in her 
mighty loathing, the forged notes which she held 
in the other. A quick step, a flash of the arm, and 
his strong. Arm fingers had grasped at the papers, 
but not before she had clasped her own tightly 
upon them. 

The struggle began ; from side to side they 
swayed together in the dim daylight, across the 
blood-stained parquet towards Prince Eugene’s 
window. A wrench, a sudden twist, a flexible 
bending, and his greater strength had gained 
them in mastery from her. 

One moment he waved them aloft in laughing 
derision before her terrified eyes, starting in a 
wild, hopeless supplication. Then he was gone. 

The rain beating down on the terrace was all 


176 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


the sound that came through the sickly gray of 
the morning. 

She staggered forward to the still open window, 
holding her breast with both hands, as if to cover 
some mortal wound from the day’s eye, uncertainly 
closed the French casement, crossed the floor with 
wavering weakness, and groped her way down the 
still misty passage. 

Peering softly into her husband’s apartment, to 
find him peacefully sleeping, then, closing the 
porti^red doors of her own, she broke forth in 
weeping, stifling her cries, as they grew beyond 
all control, with the tapestries hung from armorial 
groinings. 



CHAPTER X. 

Fraulein Putz had been charged with the 
chaperonage of Joseffa and Kurd, which she was 
accomplishing in a high degree of dejected indif- 
ference, quite in keeping with the sultry air, sur- 
charged and heavily laden with moisture from the 
morning’s rain. 

Wandering, either discreetly in advance, or lag- 
ging considerately behind, as they aimlessly paced 
between the flowering borders of the Botanical 
Gardens ; the good Putz avoiding, as far as lay in 
her limited power, too close juxtaposition with the 
endless array of snowy, disreputably bedraggled 
Venuses that sprang from rain-soaked rose-beds. 

Directing with varying guidance, finally success- 
ful, their course towards the orange-trees which 
stood in glossy, flower-crowned array upon the 
green stretch immediately adjoining the Anlagen. 
Here, while tender youth found distraction in 
orange-blossomed reflections, she sought abstrac- 
tion in viewing the occasional whirl of a bespat- 
tered equipage along the mud-paved allee\ mak- 


lyS Cleopatra’s daughter. 

ing presently, in haste-impelled dignity, her best 
Louis XIV. courtesy, which sent the many dang- 
ling and beribboned ends of her toilette fluttering 
to the air with breezy horizontalism. Almost sim- 
ultaneously, the check string pulled, the equipage 
stopped, and Fraulein Putz’s parasol set up an 
emotional flutter, by way of signal, towards the 
orange-trees, which might have been the objects 
beckoned for all the response that her excited 
appeal awakened ; though the occupant of the 
carriage saw, quite distinctly, two figures, one 
gleaming in airy muslin, the other brave in blue of 
the Uhlans, lost in mutual admiration with a degree 
of absorption not emulated by nature in her pres- 
ent mood. 

^‘Joseffa! Joseffa!” called a shrill-pitched 
voice with quick detonation ; and the person thus 
addressed raised a face suffused in blushes to 
meet the eye-glass of Princess Bieberach calmly 
fixed upon her. “You are delighted to see me, 
my dear. Let me save you the necessity of pre- 
varication ; but it seems actual!}^ providential that 
I met you, for I have just gotten a most important 
letter regarding the change of tournure in bridal 
robes, and drove in especially to see your mother 
that we might have the effect tried upon you, 
although I am in an actual state of senility. I said 
to Jeanette, on going to bed after the ball, not to 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


179 


think of awakening me, or, if I died, disturbing 
my bones, before dejeuner. But really, I should 
not have slept a wink had I read this letter 
sooner. As it is, I have left the entire house 
steeped in slumber to rush in with the news. 
Come, get in, my dear ; there is a seat for your 
companion, and as for the Lieutenant,” with a 
general air of indifferential arrangement. “ we 
can drop him at a club or some place or other.” 
Upon which Joseffa, with evident reluctance, and 
Fraulein Putz with as evident alacrity, climbed 
into the carriage, while the Lieutenant, depicting 
a gloom caught from the sky or Joseffa’s depart- 
ure, turned right about face with a military salute, 
and betook himself in direction of the Reiter 
Kaserne. 

“ My child,” began the Princess as they bowled 
past the Palace gardens, “you need not look so 
fearfully dejected. The matter which we have to 
discuss is of far more vital importance than any- 
thing you two could find to talk about ; and as 
for my taking you away, he will, as a sure conse- 
quence, think twice as much of you, though he 
will doubtless abominate me. But that fails to 
signify, as I do not have to marry him. My won- 
derful letter comes from Nannette Nikisoff, who 
never writes about anything but costumes, and, 
naturally, I thought it bathing dresses, for they 


i8o 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


wear little else at Trouville, where she is stopping, 
so of course I did not open it, not intending to 
go to the seashore just yet ; but imagine my sur- 
prise, when, longing for something to wake me 
up as I sipped my cafe, I bethought me of Nan- 
nette’s epistle. There it was in black and white, 
quite correct in every particular ; for if Nannette 
is never correct in anything else, she assuredly is 
in matters of costume. When I had gotten only 
half through, I saw the providence of the whole 
— your approaching marriage and a chance of 
making a charming position in society as unim- 
peachable authority at a single stroke. For the 
tournure is ravissante^ and has only been shown to 
one or two most intimate friends on vowing abso- 
lute secrecy, so, of course, I will* not mention it 
to a soul but yourself. Your mother, I know, will 
be positively enchanted.” 

A prediction singularly verified on reaching the 
Baroness’s salon in the Neckar Strasse, where 
both ladies, in an ecstasy of satisfaction, witnessed 
the enforcement of Madame Nikisoff’s revelations. 

“Now as for Marie and Sophia,” asserted Prin- 
cess Bieberach from her comfortable enthrone- 
ment, when the portiere had dropped upon a 
much-worn modiste, and minor affairs held their 
attention, “ you can, I am sure, work some kind 
of a change in their constitutions by sending them 


Cleopatra’s daughter. i8i 

to a colder climate. How would Russia do ? 
There was Lady Hartington, whose two daughters 
talked of nothing but hunting and horse-racing. 
In despair she took them to Italy, hoping the 
climate might tone them down into a semblance 
of languor, or at least, less energy, and just as 
she was congratulating herself upon a notable 
benefit, they both died of Roman fever. Now 
more ozone might work wonders for your two, 
and as they have excellent lungs you need fear no 
disastrous results — at least, I hope not. But as 
we have attended to these matters of the tournure 
and the girls, my dear, suppose we have a com- 
fortable chat about our friends ; though we have 
not had an opportunity to talk them over together 
for so long, it makes me feel absolutely ghoulish. 
It IS sad for friends to be separated as we have 
been, so much of the world escapes us ; and there 
are some of whom I wish particularly to know ; 
a mutual interest demands my attention. The 
Baroness von der Weide, for instance. She, I 
believe, comes in some way from Seidlitz-Pfeffer- 
ingen, does she not ? My own experiences there 
were so slight that my remembrances are vague. 
Poor dear papa always avowed that the place was 
so stagnant it gave him moral malaria. He loved 
Paris so tenderly, though that may have been 
because he knew the city better.” 


1 82 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

Ah ! my friend, you awaken such memories. 
The von der Weides — Marie, Sophia, Joseffa, 
my dears, you may retire ; but first ring the bell 
and order caf6.” 

While these directions were completing fulfil- 
ment, the Princess was spreading and arranging 
her draperies in pleased expectancy, as of one 
awaiting the gratification of long-sought informa- 
tion — information postponed unconscionably, at a 
moment promising revelation, while the Baroness 
solicitously ascertained whether her interlocutor 
preferred caf^ noir or caf^ au lait. Being relieved 
in mind by an indication of preferment in favor 
of caf^ noivy she proceeded to secondary causes. 

‘^You allude to H61^ne’s husband’s branch of 
the von der Weides, do you not ? ” 

“ Nothing of the kind. I mean her own family, 
the Gumpholdskirchen.” 

**How you relieve my mind, ma cMre. I was 
almost dreading to proceed.” 

“Why so.!* There is no one here to be shocked. 
As for the matter of that, we all know, of course, 
how the father of the present Baron ran off to 
Switzerland with his governess and then came 
back.” 

“ But married. She was a Swiss, and the Swiss 
are so correct.” 

“ Indeed } I know they are noted for virtue 


CLEOPATRA'S DAUGHTER. 


183 


and cheese ; but, for my own part, I have found 
them strongly prone to employ themselves so 
busily in avoiding all appearance of evil, as to 
have no time left to avoid the evil itself. Quite 
English, in fact ; though as for the von der 
Weides, one phase of the injunction mattered as 
immaterially as the other ; and why they ever un- 
dertook to better that dull,- overgrown Carl’s men- 
tal condition I never understood, when he would 
have done excellently for the army in his natural 
state, being, like so many others, quite safely 
embarricaded in his own ignorance until a woman 
undertook enlightenment : but as they are both 
dead why need we trouble ourselves } Proceed, I 
beg of you.” 

“ I know that you have travelled much more 
than I, and are more correctly informed regarding 
propriety of action, my dear ; but when you begin 
about the von der Weides, really, you make me 
quite sad, recalling, somehow, poor Cleopatra 
Varasov’s trouble. I have thought about her 
strangely much to-day. She said to me once, that 
if one made a single step downwards the world 
of his acquaintance knew it in full particular a 
quarter of an hour after it happened ; but if one 
climbed a height they saw his first faint reflection 
a quarter of a century after he was dead — that 
the world looks down, not up.” 


184 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

“ That being the case, ma chere, I quite deem 
it my duty to keep well abreast of the times, and 
if my neighbors occupy themselves delving in the 
mire, I have nothing left to do but follow their 
example — the more industriously the greater my 
safety. I have not the slightest idea that the 
world will cease talking about women until they 
cease talking about each other ; and as that hour 
will, 1 am quite positive, not come in my day, I 
see no need of reform. But the Gumpholds- 
kirchen — what did they do ? ” 

“ Nothing, that I can think of. Their entire 
time, when I knew them, seemed to be spent in 
going to church and learning the languages, which 
they practised upon their foreign relations during 
lengthy visitations afforded them.” 

“ Foreign relations, did you say ? Were they 
with them much ? ” 

Quite a good deal. One cousin in particular, 
a young fellow with a beautiful tenor voice, who 
was very devoted to Hdlene, and every one 
thought his feelings reciprocated, until von der 
Weide proved the reverse.” 

“Indeed.^ You interest me greatly,” returned 
the Princess, brightening perceptibly ; “ I quite 
dote on romance. Did this young cousin of 
whom you speak, ever cultivate his beautiful tenor 
voice to any extent ? ” 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


185 


“ O ! Of course he did. How odd of me to 
forget ! You quite assist my memory. When 
Hdene married, he avowed a sudden intent of 
going upon the stage. The family were enraged, 
naturally, and refused to have anything to do with 
him, even when he had made a great success — 
though really his nom dti tkmtre has escaped me 
entirely. Not having sung here in Stuttgart, I 
could hardly hope to remember it.” ^ 

“Perhaps if you repeated the alphabet you might 
successfully recall it. I have found that an infal- 
lible assistant when at loss for anything of the 
kind,” insinuated the Princess blandly. 

“I am positive that it was neither A nor Z,” 
declared the Baroness promptly. 

“ Suppose we try some of the intervening let- 
ters ; we still have twenty-three resources left us,” 
asserted the inquirant, by no means disconcerted 
at such a beginning. “E or F, for instance. Think 
again.” 

“E — E — no, not E; F — F — fa — fe — Fun- 
nel — Fannelli ! ” with sudden triumph, “Carlo 
Fannelli. Have you ever heard of him ? ” 

“ O ! Quite frequently ; he sings in Vienna,” 
replied the Princess, with a slow smile of supreme 
gratification. 

“Yes, Carlo Fannelli. Really, your faculty for 
awakening my powers of reminiscence is little 
short of marvellous.” 


1 86 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

‘‘You flatter me, my dear — you do, I assure 
you. I have not given you half the grounds for 
accusation that I intend giving some people,” 
returned the other, in modest truthfulness, as she 
drew her laces about her and descended to her 
equipage, now long in waiting. Rolling home- 
ward, with a countenance calmly complacent, smil- 
ing somewhat sardonically, on alighting at foot of 
the terrace stair, to observe the object of her late 
minute inquiries cast glances of polite and unmis- 
takable significance towards Princess Ostrande, 
as de Tocqueville came forward to meet her ; 
though she smiled again in passing, this time 
with equal sweetness of serenity upon them both. 
Disappearing almost immediately, to remain invis- 
ible until just before the announcement of dinner, 
when she made her entree in the grand salon — a 
triumph of Jeanette’s skill — a skill which had 
required some hours for its manipulations, though 
no evidence of flagging serenity betrayed regret 
at tediousness of the undertaking, as she claimed 
Waldemar Daggerhofs arm to escort her to the 
dining-room, an honor unconventional in its con- 
ferrence, but none the less appreciable, being 
regarded by him with absolute relief, a full escape 
from his own thoughts under cover of her gay 
cynicism ; for the day had hardly been as propi- 
tiously employed as by his companion, but filled 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 187 

with vague, troubled conjecture, which had even 
robbed him of sleep by its forced presence. 

The sudden, painful agitation of the Countess, 
her utter abandon to indefinable fear and dread, 
quickly followed by reckless defiance that found 
vent in gayety, so genuine in outward semblance 
as to puzzle him still more, had left its mark 
upon his impressionable, acutely observant nature, 
that acquired nervous excitement, restless energy 
for analytical study, from baffled vivisection of 
psychical motive and effect. 

The Countess Zaprony had not made her ap- 
pearance at dejeuner^ on jflea of fatigue ; but as 
fully half the ladies in the place had taken a wing 
of fowl and glass of wine in their own apartments, 
to blossom forth on the terrace somewhat later, 
her defection was, even then, quite compatible 
with the unusual demand upon her energies as 
hostess at a feast rendered so largely successful 
by her brilliant, unflagging spirit. 

Although the face of Count Zaprony bore a 
look of troubled perplexity, until, on opening has- 
tily a little parchment note signed ‘ Natalie ’, the 
shadow melted in a smile, as, refolding it, he an- 
nounced that Madame had fully convalesced from 
her slight indisposition, and would join them at 
dinner. Waldemar turned his attention from the 
Princess, momentarily, to cast a swift, half-veiled 
glance towards her as she entered. 


i88 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


Her bearing and mien were regal, commanding, 
quite at her best, as, leaning upon Zaprony’s arm, 
she smilingly replied to little ejaculations and 
congratulations which welcomed her again among 
them, but to his quick eye a dash of rozige sus- 
tained the color where her own was wont to flush, 
and the deep hollows about her eyes, gleaming 
with a restless feverishness, while bearing out in 
evidence her announced indisposition, gave trace 
of agony that burned and seared beneath a calm 
exterior, which, even in the measured gesture of 
her hands, bore to his quickened sense of observa- 
tion an impression of mighty self-command, forced 
to a tense endurance almost bounding forth from 
the magnificent restraint that held in leash with 
nerves fused to steel. 

The dinner was purely a home affair, the house 
party alone being gathered in the great dining- 
room about a table ablaze with lights and flowers, 
the vast apartment filled with a soft hum -of voices, 
echoing from hangings of Cordovan leather, bright 
little exchange of experiences breathing a spirit 
of bonhomie which people thrown intimately to- 
gether in a country house learn involuntarily to 
assume. 

A merry hum that increased, rather than dimin- 
ished as the menu progressed, wines quickening 
ideas to shifting glimpse of gayety and color, 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


189 


bringing to none a greater modicum than Countess 
Natalie, who drank more deeply than the sip with 
which she was wont to place each glass aside in 
turn, surprising Waldemar by full return of that 
gayety of mood, now still more genuine, which had 
last night so puzzled him. 

The lights, the company, laughter, and conversa- 
tion seemed to bring a corresponding ratio of real- 
ness and security, as of one accustomed to find 
forgetfulness in surroundings equally with action, 
a forcing out of all mental intrusion not springing 
from, or in unison with, the moment. 

They had just ceased laughing at a gay sally of 
de Tocqueville’s, subsiding into individual enjoy- 
ment, to relapse to silence which Germans describe 
as the passing of an angel through the room, — a 
proceeding in this present instance materially 
hastened, if not abruptly put a stop to, by the Prin- 
cess Bieberach announcing in her shrillest, most 
portentous tone of possible, delightfully wicked 
import, that she had a charming romance to 
recite. 

“ A romance equal to those of the middle ages, 
and beginning in a matter-of-fact place which you 
would never suspect as the cradle of such a de- 
lightful idyl, none other, my dear Baroness von der 
Weide, than Seidlitz-Pfefferingen. Were you ever 
there.?” 


1 90 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

The Baroness responded with praiseworthy in- 
difference that she sustained faint memory of 
the place, though the sudden glance of startled 
suspicion with which she had regarded Princess 
Ostrande when Madame blithely struck her pre- 
lude was not of corresponding airiness. 

“ Ah ! I am glad not an intimate association,” 
came the rejoinder, given somewhat dryly, ‘Tor I 
should desperately regret relating anything which 
could be anticipated, line for line, like a breviary. 
Though I am foolishly taking it for granted that 
all are in ignorance, maybe some of you are not, 
possibly having had experiences there. In that 
case, please correct me, and even if, as raconteur^ 
I should vary unwittingly, it will hardly matter 
materially, for really it is so delightfully — ” and 
the Princess hesitated for a fitting expression, look- 
ing down at her many-ringed claws sufficient space 
to give the entire length of the table excellent 
opportunity for a careful survey of her toilette, and 
Jeanette’s efforts in pink and white. Then, look- 
ing up as suddenly, to catch sight of several ex- 
pressive pairs of eyes fixed in anxious intensity 
upon her, smiled and nodded with sweet compre- 
hensiveness upon their fair owners, blushing sud- 
denly conscious. 

“ But as I shall tell no names, except that the 
place was really Seidlitz-Pfefferingen, I am sure it 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 19 i 

can harm no one, even though I tell it, who claim 
modestly to know everything,” an assertion which 
caused several ladies to shudder discreetly behind 
their fans. There was once a charming young 
girl — for all young girls are charming; it is only 
at my age that people must toil to make them- 
selves attractive — as I trust I am now doing. Well, 
this young creature was deeply attached to a man, 
who, like all men, irrespective of age — to all girls, 
irrespective of appearance — was intensely inter- 
esting. But, if I mistake not, this young man was 
peculiarly interesting because of a delightful tenor 
voice.” 

A feminine chorus of “Oh’s!” and “Ah’s!” 
indicative in general as somewhat of a relief at 
minutial bent of the story here intervened. Smil- 
ing grimly, the Princess continued : “ But there 
seems to have flourished in the Eden of this 
young girl’s heart the serpent of worldly wisdom, 
so often discovered too late to be conveniently 
available of assistance. The sweet tenor, like 
many musical people, until they have lost their 
voices sufflciently to reach affluent conditions, was 
hardly a companion of joys, such as a rich and 
valiant knight promised from the depths of his 
bottomless purse.” 

“ Really, Princess,” interposed the Baroness von 
der Weide with well-bred weariness, “ your story 


192 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


is so conventional in stamp as hardly to merit the 
distinguished empressement you give it.” 

“ O ! my love, have patience, I beg ; even you 
cannot foretell the end, nor, for the matter of that, 
the heroine either. It is one of those charming 
instances of incomplete disaster with which, I 
hear, English fiction so generously abounds.” 

“ I pray you, Madame,” began General de 
Luneville, sorely remindful of his own experience 
with the narrator, ‘‘ if the story is of English 
extraction, allow us to read it for ourselves. The 
English propagate their newspapers solely for the 
purpose of personal romance.” 

“ Monsieur le Generale, I would hardly, even 
in my assured position, aspire to English romance. 
This is only French, with English possibilities, as 
I intimated.” 

“ I am sure the English are delightful,” put in 
Princess Ostrande, eager now to avert the dis- 
aster of her own prompting. 

“ Doubtless yon find them so, my dear. But 
to my story. This cousin of the charming voice, 
when bereft of his sweet idyl, instead of going 
on a crusade against the heathen, as he would 
have done under earlier conditions, performed a 
feat far more difficult, and dared public opinion, 
by going upon the stage.” 

“ Charming, charming ! ” chimed in the Baron- 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


193 


ess von der Weide, elaborately vivacious, sweetly 
regarding her ex-confidante, whose training in 
private theatricals now stood her good stead. 
“ An English moral quite to the taste of Prin- 
cess Ostrande. He braved public opinion and got 
off with a professional reputation.” 

“ Which, strangely enough, he continues to 
enjoy, showing conclusively that, even in this 
degenerate day, some phases of the variety afford 
gratification.” 

“ Madame, your pessimism makes one quite 
dismal.” 

Why, Monsieur le Generale, you fill me with 
alarm ; you still have your decorations, have you 
not } But how you force me to diverge from my 
recital ! The young man, covered with glory, 
and, what is often more difficult for a man to 
sustain with discretion, billets donXy returned 
under his nom du theatre^ faithful to his old love, 
laying his heart at her feet, which, notwith- 
standing the fact that the remainder of her family 
disown all pericardic relationship, she accepted, 
as the etiquette books direct, with thanks.” 

** And they lived happily together forever after.” 

“That, Count, depends upon her husband’s 
obtuseness. Do not be rash ; I told you that the 
story was one of incomplete disaster.” 



CHAPTER XL 

Waldemar Daggerhof, as was so frequently 
his wont, arose and sallied forth in the first per- 
fumed freshness of the day, when fog-clouds, 
flushing pink, rolled westward, leaving all the 
east a-glitter with pale blue and flashing gold. A 
misty, yellow glory, tangling alike in verdant 
crown of towering oak and dew-spangled spider- 
web that caught between the flowering grasses. 

Behind him lay the great house, still in slum- 
ber ; below, around, a world awakening from the 
lullaby of night to smile a welcome at the coming 
day. 

As he had passed the music-room, looking 
up involuntarily at the vine-trailed balcony, that 
night — now two weeks old — swept once again 
in full reflection across the mirror of his memory, 
that gave back, too, the image of bright hours be- 
tween, when ceaseless fetes prolonged the joyous 
freight of one glad day until another had long 
heralded — a gayety which thrust all thought of 
disagreeable import forth as sunlight cloud-wreaths ; 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


195 


startling him almost in suddenness of recollection 
that, since immediate prompting had given such 
faint trace of its existence in the Countess’s 
routine of enjoyment as to leave him almost 
doubtful of its actuality, and presently entirely 
forgetful again, as he became gradually engrossed 
in thought of other bent. Wandering on aim- 
lessly, farther and farther into the tangled wild 
wood of the park, until the sharp, sudden detona- 
tion of a pistol jarring upon the stillness caused 
him to halt as suddenly and look about in alert 
expectancy, aroused from absent musings. 

The sunshine sifted through the foliage of 
mighty oaks which breathed of centuries past, 
when summer time as gay as now had rocked 
them with a cradle-song of zephyrs, or, waxing 
in a wilder mood, still unforgot, had torn and rent 
with passionate might that strove to rive them 
from the earth’s embrace. 

The vines hung close; some blossoming — clem- 
atis it was — stood out in sudden flash of sunlight 
pale and ghostlike, gleaming from shadowy leaves 
and mosses intermingling. A fleecy cloud sailed 
in the blue deep overhead, noiseless and grandly 
calm, one with the life about him, no sound mar- 
ring its stillness until another crashing detonation, 
clear and distinct, awoke faint, pealing echoes. 

He advanced quickly to the brow of a rocky, 


196 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

fern-fringed ledge, whence the report proceeded, 
and even before he reached, the spot a faint plume 
of odorous smoke curled and broke in lazy cloudi- 
ness above it. 

Below, at his feet, lay a long stretch of level 
sward, bounded on either side by high, moss- 
grown, flower-hung embankments, of which the 
ledge giving him lodgment formed a part. At 
the far end of this tree-shadowed vista, massive 
timbers formed a screen, now partly himg with 
wild convolvulus that, weaving in and out, made 
kindly veil to rent and fissure, gaping grimly still, 
betokening the lokal of a former schnss-platz. 
While he yet gazed, a third report fell upon his ear, 
and looking thitherwards through arching green- 
ery, he saw the Countess Zaprony advancing, 
trailing the length of her sombre robe along the 
short sward until she reached the screen, to catch, 
with a quick air of triumph, a tiny handkerchief 
from off an upright timber, examine it closely, 
carefully, holding aloft against the light to count 
the tiny circles cut in its filmy texture ; then, 
deftly fastening it once more into place, she 
caught up the long, trailing drapery of her gown 
with a flexible sweep of one slender wrist and 
returned to her former position, loading the cart- 
ridge chambers to raise and fire again, again, with 
rapid, clicking motion as the barrels sprang in 
groove. 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 197 

While the smoke-flowers still blossomed and 
hung about her face, she laughed out clear and 
joyously, dropping her pistol as she clapped her 
hands together, again advanced quickly to the tat- 
tered mark, this time to shake daringly, know- 
ingly, the swaying mass of timbers rotted and 
loosed, until a slender jarring more would have 
brought them crushing downwards upon her, to 
leave unrecognizable semblance of a woman. He 
opened his lips to utter warning, but before the 
cry had left them she was returning, slowly, with 
head bent and hands nervously twitching, tearing 
into fragments the bullet-riddled fabric, tearing 
into shreds smaller and smaller, presently knotting 
them tightly together, to cast passionately from 
her, putting both hands before her eyes, with 
sudden, agonized gesture, as if to shut some mind- 
wrought vision from her sight. 

The idea then first flashed upon him, so absorbed 
and rapt had been his attention, that his presence 
did her wrong, because unknown, and, turning 
on his heel, he noiselessly withdrew, filled with 
vague wonderment at the scene he had just wit- 
nessed. Finally dismissing all conjecture with 
the despatch of his cafe, to meet her later, fresh, 
bright, buoyant, as if just arisen from happiest 
dreams with happiest omens for the day. 

I am going to the Palace to spend an hour 


198 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

with Queen Olga,” she said to them, as they 
formed a merry group about her in the great hall, 
chatting and planning for a driving party shortly 
to be undertaken, at the same time lamenting 
volubly her defection. “ But you know, mes 
amies, this will be my sole opportunity for a quiet 
talk with Her Majesty before she returns to 
Friedrichs Hafen, as she purposes, immediately 
after the ball at Wilhelma to-morrow night.” 

*‘Mou Dieu^' interposed the Princess Bieberach, 
with languid, devotional gesture and sincere earn- 
estness of tone. “ My devoutest prayer is, that you 
may get out of one door of the Palace before the 
King of Holland gets in at another; his ugliness is 
so stupendous that nothing on earth short of a ball 
in his honor would induce me to go near him. 
Well do I remember when he came here to marry 
his prhnihe amour, the King’s sister, who fainted 
dead away on obtaining a clear view of his face for 
the first time out of a miniature, del ! How that 
woman wanted to be a queen.” 

“ Possibly, with no such aspirations or prospect 
of so lengthy a companionship in view, I shall be 
able to sustain a short conversation,” returned the 
Countess, laughingly. “ But after his arrival the 
place will hardly be in a state of repose conducive 
to exchange of confidences, so you may await my 
return without fear of disaster,” and she bade 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


199 


them an revoir, with a gay wave of her hand as 
the carriage turned into the long avenue of horse- 
chestnuts. 

An avenue shortly to look down upon another 
roll of wheels, this time bearing forth a goodly 
party seeking fresh sensation under guise of study- 
ing nature, which, in other than the human variety, 
would have been sensation indeed, if sensation 
and novelty are synonymous. Waldemar, making 
some vague excuses as to correspondence due, 
failed to accompany them, preferring to quench 
the anxieties of distant friends by lounging under 
wide-spreading trees upon the terrace, to watch 
the cloud-massed cumuli sail, noiselessly, agleam 
like great opals in the sunlight-flooded infinity of 
blue, falling presently into day-dreams summarily 
put to flight by sound of the Baroness von Pap- 
penheim-Waggenheim’s full voice, quite near at 
hand. 

“ Not a mortal about the place. Monsieur, but 
the servants and the pea-fowls.” 

“And incidentally myself, Madame,” he added, 
rising with politeness in his smile, and anathema in 
his thoughts at interruption of his luxurious loneli- 
ness. 

Pardon for my lack of consideration on grounds 
of extreme modesty. I could hardly hope that, fail- 
ing to find sufficient charm in the society of your 


200 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


friends to accompany them, you would be likely to 
afford me a, welcome equal to Selkirk’s, although 
I shall detain you but a moment,” she continued, 
disregarding his quick deprecation, rendered more 
genuine at prospect of speedy release. ‘‘But I 
had such horrible dreams about the Countess 
Zaprony last night that I drove out just as soon 
as those tiresome modistes allowed me to escape, — 
and now that I come to think of it, I forgot to tell 
them about that trimming I wish changed,” she 
added, parenthetically and sotto voce. 

“ Madame need give herself no uneasiness on that 
score, I mean of the Countess Zaprony,” interposed 
Waldemar, smiling amusedly ; taking advantage of 
the momentary silence into which this grievous 
phantom of neglect had plunged her, to continue, “ I 
have never seen her look more bright and charm- 
ing than she did this morning on departing for 
the Palace.” 

“Well, Monsieur,” returned the Baroness, leav- 
ing possible mishap to Fate and the modistes^ “ my 
thanks for your assurances ; you have relieved my 
mind greatly. It used to be that people called me 
superstitious ; maybe they were right, for I would 
worry for hours if one of the family sneezed and 
I forgot to say ''Ihr wohl! remembering the awful 
fate once swift treading on neglect of the injunc- 
tion. But now, why, really I feel almost wicked 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


201 


sometimes in my nineteenth-century disregard of 
all tradition;” an avowal which set Waldemar 
to smiling again as he regarded her portly, com- 
fortable figure. ‘‘ However, to return to my 
dreams, which, though very mixed, were suf- 
ficiently clear to fill me with absolute alarrn, 
though you might lightly attribute them to those 
Strasburg path at soiiper last night ; but, as I 
stated, I am not at all superstitious — unless I 
have ground for presentiment. You will excuse 
an old woman’s foolish anxiety on plea of fond 
interest in the object of it.” She began presently, 
after a flash of silence, and in an altered tone 
which caused the smile to fade gradually from his 
face : “Her mother was my dearest friend, and 
when she was dying I promised her always to 
be loyal to her daughter, as I had been to her, 
though little did I dream that she would ever 
need my sympathy, or come back from all that 
splendor like a bird with a broken wing. Pardon 
me, I grow garrulous, and doubtless you will 
attribute that, as well as my presentiments, to 
age, all because of a train of thought awakened 
by foolish dreams. But I am actually excusable, 
because of late they have been so horribly, 
strangely persistent ; really, they quite make me 
shudder now in bare remembrance, though of 
course it is utter folly, — or the chill that this dense 


202 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


shadow has given me,” looking up suspiciously 
from the garden chair in which she was resting 
at the far-branching greenery above, then, pres- 
ently, with more lingering satisfaction adown the 
sunlit avenue stretching beyond. 

“Your eyes are younger than mine; is that a 
carriage coming up the drive } ” 

Gravely adjusting his glass, he announced, after 
careful consideration, the opinion that it was the 
equipage of the Countess returning, gallantly of- 
fering his arm to escort her to the terrace stair, 
there to await an arrival which would, at one and 
the same time, afford them both relief ; Baroness 
von Pappenheim-Waggenheim giving immediate 
vent to the commingled sensations of presenti- 
ment and modistical distrust that warred within 
her, detaining the presence and attention of the 
Countess until claimed by fresh-arriving guests, 
already welcoming, as she approached, by Count 
Zaprony, who had ridden somewhat in advance 
of the driving party. 

“ But, my dear Zaprony,” Nikolas Nikisoff was 
saying, dropping the hand of his cousin Waldemar 
to return abruptly to his host, “ it seems oddly 
strange to see you here, after leaving you, or 
rather your second self, gambling like a grandee 
of Castile down there at Monte Carlo.” 

“Playing at Monte Carlo.? My dear fellow, you 


Cleopatra’s, daughter. 203 

should know better than — ” he began in smiling 
deprecation, to cease with a start, and turn, on 
hearing a sudden fall immediately behind him. 

It was the Countess, rigid, senseless, pale as 
in death, stricken prone like some stately blossom 
at breath of the mistral’s chill. 

Zaprony caught her up tenderly in his strong 
arms, bearing her to a divan near at hand, sum- 
moning maids and medical assistance to her aid, 
bathing her temples in eau de cologne ; strangely 
quiet and self-contained in contrast with the Bar- 
oness, now quite hysterical, who bent beside him, 
making feint of usefulness largely disproportionate 
with the loquacity of dismally verified prediction 
to which she gave free vent. 

“You see, Monsieur Waldemar,” in injured 
tearfulness, “it was not the Strasburg pat^ that 
made me dream such horrible things ; I shall 
never doubt my presentiments again, — never, 
never.” Then, with flattering self-appropriation : 
“ It was a punishment, yes, a punishment for my 
disregard of sagas and traditions. I might have 
known it ; it’s what we get for imitating these 
anti-religionists in their wild disbelievings. She 
will not get well, I am quite sure ; her mother 
died exactly in this state, unconscious, only with 
the pneumonia. Do you think she will ever 
recover.?” This last to Count Zaprony, her pre- 


204 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

vious ejaculations having been to the ministering 
group in general, though their reception had been 
a silence unvarying as now. 

Zaprony, unheedful of all else, gazed with fixed 
agony upon the drawn, ghastly face of the Count- 
ess, now relaxing from tensity of muscle into a 
more natural aspect. Her lips moved slightly, 
then convulsively, as if to give utterance to some 
sudden thought flashing in returning conscious- 
ness ; a shudder ran through her frame, one hand 
moved weakly, clutching at her throat, her eyes 
opened slowly, to close again. Again a shivering, 
this time more violent, seized upon her, to leave 
her breathing in long-drawn gasps like sighs of 
the dying. Dazed and bewildered, she stared 
about her, her lips giving no utterance but striv- 
ing faintly to form a smile as Zaprony’s eyes 
looked into hers with glad, quick-springing hope. 
After a few sips of wine she raised, with assist- 
ance of his supporting arm, to a half-reclining 
posture upon the massed cushions of Turkish 
embroidery ladening the couch, beginning, bro- 
kenly at first, in a tone fraught with faint smiling 
deprecation, to regret the inopportune suddenness 
of her indisposition, regaining, by and by, so com- 
pletely command of herself, that the physician, 
after springing up the stairway of the grand portal 
three steps at a bound, to rush quite breathless 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


205 


into the salon indicated, found her chatting with 
a group of anxious friends, a bright smile illumin- 
ing her face — a smile reflectant in the counte- 
nances about her, but in none more brightly than 
Zaprony’s, as giving her his arm, they retired, 
close followed by the physician, who frowned, 
clearing his throat ominously, with a peremptory 
vehemence indicating full disapproval, when she 
nodded her au revoirs in gay defiance, emphasizing 
entire determination to be well and join them all 
at dinner, no matter what injunctions and fiats 
might iiitervene ; her face, in its rapid transfig- 
uration, becoming remindful of that night upon 
the balcony and the quick, desperate change her 
will had wrought in masking its portrayals. What 
could be wrong ? What lay amiss ? Dimly his 
uncle’s words came to him as they told the Coun- 
tess’s history on that stormy Christmas Eve be- 
fore a glowing grate at Hotel Marquardt. The 
strangest part of the story is, that de Tocqueville 
and Zaprony are so strikingly alike in appearance, 
carriage, and bearing.” Could it be.? But pshaw! 
to what lengths would this insatiable passion for 
vivisection of emotional effect not lead. To 
wrong, even in thought, a woman beautiful in 
being and in deed as the Countess Zaprony, was 
unworthy his heart and honor as a gentleman. 
It was but natural that nerves, overwrought to 


2o6 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


fullest tensity of development by weight of woe 
which seared with desecrating frost the first fruits 
of her heart, should leave imprint that sometimes 
a faint reminder brought ruthlessly in full relief 
from out those dim recesses whence the light and 
joy of her glad present had well-nigh banished 
them. 

At dinner, this refutation of his calmer, more . 
practical self acquired fresh and decisive con- 
firmation. Nikolas Nikisoff it was, too, who 
brought to bear upon the acute impression of 
the circumstance. The Countess was again with 
them, grandly, calmly beautiful, clad in a rich 
gown of flame brocade which lent fictitious flush 
to a face serene, unclouded, repelling with ready 
smile even remote allusion to an emotion past, to 
be, apparently, as suddenly forgot as its awaken- 
ing. 

They were seating at the long table decked 
with waxen lights that stood, phalanx of 'mellow 
glare, between chased golden bowls, freighted with 
luscious roses ; ‘and lifting a single bud from be- 
side his Sevres plate, Nikisoff, contemplating for 
a moment its beauty reflectively, pinned it upon 
the lapel of his coat, remarking meanwhile to 
Z^prony : — 

“Your roses' are rare. Doubtless your passion 
for them is equal to my own, judging from the 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 207 

minute study which I saw you bestowing upon 
them just now, out on the terrace.” 

My dear fellow ! Your faculty for interchang- 
ing personal presentment is wonderful. Twice 
to-day you have flattered me with some one else’s 
anatomy.” 

‘‘But, Count, I positively thought I saw you, 
just at nightfall, on the wing of the terrace over- 
looking the precipice.” 

“ No ; it was an optical delusion ; some one, 
gifted with my corporeal reflection, has been im- 
posing himself upon your vision. The only mis- 
sion that I undertake in the rosen garten is to 
gather Madame’ s favorite gloires de Dijon^ and, 
as she is not wearing them to-night, my horti- 
cultural innocence is fully proven.” And he 
laughed a little at his friend’s repeated mistake, 
as he singled a gloire de Dijon from the bowl 
before him to catch it lightly in his coat lapel, 
bowing with a smile, betokening rare remem- 
brance, to the Countess. 

“I have never been accused of near-sighted- 
ness,” returned Nikisoff, in a tone tinged faintly 
with resentment, which disappeared as he pro- 
ceeded. “Indeed, in the Turco affair I was con- 
sidered one of the best fellows in the regiment 
for reco7inaissance. But nimporte, I am reminded 
though — ’’and he plunged into a war episode 


2o8 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


hinging on mistaken identity ; an episode which 
caused this little contretemps to fade in dramatic 
intensity of its recital, even to the quick sense 
and tentative imagination of Daggerhof, who had 
just now, with veiled glance, sought for some 
answering trace of emotion in the Countess’s face 
at repetition of a theme to which he had attrib- 
uted the prompting of her late agitation. But 
no ; the only change of expression that her calm, 
pale countenance depicted was a sudden springing 
flame of wrath, white, fixed, and intense ; for one 
short instant it gleamed, to be quick followed by 
contempt that left her to subside again into her 
former attitude of interest in Prince Daggerhof’s 
ambling, sunny conversation, from which acute 
sense of hearing had for a passing moment 
claimed her, shivering a little presently, but only 
because of a sudden gust of air that, rushing 
in through deep French windows, now closed 
by watchful attendants, flared the candles into 
mellow, fan-like glow. He was correct ;.the look 
which had sprung to her face was one of wrathful 
contempt at her own weakness, and determinate 
self-command to crush out remotest semblance 
of repetition. He had attributed to her nerves, as 
actualities, mere memories jarring to painful emo- 
tion with their awakening. And there dismissed 
with a smile that relegated to mistaken idea 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 209 

the vain bent of his ponclerings, devoting himself, 
with those about him, to the gay progression of 
the diner, which finally, after the English fashion, 
found the men alone over their wine, as Countess 
Natalie gave the signal for retiring. 

She had skilfully managed to direct the group- 
ing of the ladies at that end of the grande salon 
farthest from the terrace, to leave them, after a 
little, absorbed in gay chatter, which mingled 
with the tones of a Hungarian rhapsodie, rich in 
mighty chords, swept forth in full undulation 
from the Bltithner grand piano, awakening respon- 
sive to the fingers of Princess Ostrande. For an 
instant the Countess stood at the low window in 
full glow of the white light which streamed upon 
her, calm and stately, in a pose of perfect self- 
possession and indifference, until the crushing of 
fresh-fallen twigs on the terrace told of a result 
evidently awaited ; for without rebating her de- 
meanor, she slowly crossed the balcony, descend- 
ing the stairway, to advance with slightly 
hastened steps toward a fountain noisily dripping 
beneath a half-arbored embrasure, where the tall 
figure of a man rose in indistinct silhouette, a 
blacker shadow than' those encircling it. As she 
approached, he had made a step forward, letting 
the light gleam full upon him, then drew back- 
ward. 


210 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


“What do you wish?” she said, with acme of 
equanimity and calm, so widely different from the 
startled imprecation which he had hoped for and 
awaited, as to sweep him entirely off his guard, 
for an instant leaving him absent of expression. 
“ What do I wish ? ” he repeated directly, with 
slow gathering insult in the tone, “I wish more 
than the beggarly amount with which you befooled 
me two weeks ago.” 

“Indeed!” she answered, “you quite fill me 
with surprise. Many would have deemed a pre- 
sent, not altogether voluntary, of papers which 
relegated them to their proper sphere, all-sufficient ; 
you must deem me a very pitiful dupe to be ever 
so responsive to your askings. But I have no time 
for parley. Detention here compromises me. I 
must be going.” 

“ Going ! ” he said, savagely, drawing her sud- 
denly towards him as she had turned with feint of 
leaving. “ Going ! Not until I am ready, Madame. 
Compromise you! You afford me more amuse- 
ment than I had awaited. You stand in an odd 
predicament, filled with a righteous virtue lest the 
presence of your lawful, loving spouse should com- 
promise you.” 

“ I have neither time, nor desire to speak at 
length with you,” she said, wrenching herself free 
from his grasp, grown lax because of her resist- 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 21 i 

lessness. “ Name your terms, then I will consider 
compliance.” 

“You will consider. Well, / have considered. 
Nothing short of double the amount you gave 
me at our last meeting will tempt me to release 
revenge.” 

“Indeed!” with indifferent contempt. “You 
wish to revisit Monte Carlo ? ” 

“ Who told you of my presence there ? ” 

“ I was fully posted as to your movements. That 
is sufficient. As for the money, I have not got it, 
nor would I give it if I had.” 

“You will not! Then come!” he cried in 
vehement rage, throwing his powerful arm sud- 
denly about her waist and dragging her violently 
forward until their steps had touched the outer- 
most verge of shadow. Already the clear voices 
of the ladies conversing in the graride salo7i fell 
distinct upon her ear. A long sighing cadenza 
swept in minor tone from out the light. A shriek 
was stifled back upon her lips with effort that left 
her shivering, powerless, almost lifeless, until her 
head sank down upon his breast. The contact 
seemed to bear life out of her loathing. 

“ I will . . I will . . ” she gasped with difficulty, 
staggering backwards toward the fountain and the 
shadow. “ I will . . Grand Dieu ! . . are you a 
fiend .? ” 


212 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


“I am a man in need of money,” he replied with 
smiling malevolence. Only another definition 
of the term, but more polite ; and I would advise 
you, as a friend, to make use of it. When will you 
give me the money ? ” 

“ Oh ! I do not know . . I do not know . . ” she 
panted, bereft for a moment of all power of thought 
at recking of disaster, averted, maybe, for a little 
space hardly worth its dalliance. 

“ Hasten ! you compromise me,” he mocked, in 
scornful malevolence. 

“ Oh ! can it be ! can it be ! Must I sacrifice my 
mother’s jewels.^” she ejaculated pitifully, scarce 
above her breath. The words choked, inarticu- 
late, because of dry sobs racking her, a shivering 
creeping afresh upon her. Then, with one of 
those rare transitions in which her strength seemed 
always drawn from some sudden inspiration hold- 
ing definite defence, she asked in a tone steadied 
to careful modulation: “Do you know the 
grounds 

“You have afforded me ample opportunity to 
study them.” 

“ To-morrow night, at eleven o’clock, I will meet 
you at the old schnss-platz, to left of the avenue, 
next to the river.” A simple declaration that, 
given, left her almost powerless to restrain emo- 
tion so intense as to cause her to sink upon a 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 213 

bench, unable longer to stand upright because of 
violent, tremblings which racked her. 

“ Ah ! ” he said grimly, “ play your part better 
than that. You want to have an end put to 
me and your anxieties — denial is useless. I am 
hardly the fool you hope me. I will meet you 
to-morrow night, as before, by the window leading 
upon the terrace. Whose voice is that as the 
one word ** Natalushka ! ” swept clear, distinct, 
to their hearing. 

Dio mio ! Let me go ! ” 

Natalushka ! Natalushka ! ”■ came again. 

Ah ! your fond husband. Wait. I will not 
let you go until we hav^e full understanding.” 

I will ! Oh ! anything — yes ! yes ! ” 

“ Natalushka ! ” 

“ I am coming,” she cried, as footsteps echoed 
on the balcony stair. 

He freed her then, to stagger towards a rose- 
tree, catching eagerly at the flower-trailing bran- 
ches, tearing her hands, all unmindful of the 
piercing thorns, as she held aloft a rich-hued 
cluster before Zaprony’s light-dazded vision ; 
while he chided her for her imprudence in braving 
the night’s dew in such light quest, when a score 
of hands would gladly serve her bidding. 

This, almost in hearing of Narcisse de Tocque- 
ville’s laughing derision. 



CHAPTER XII. 

The air was sifting lazily through silken hang- 
ings that shrouded to mellow light Zaprony’s 
study. The hour was nearing sunset. Beyond, 
in the Park, a dazzling radiance floated in the air, 
bringing into clear relief myriads of butterflies and 
insects darting and whirling in a web of motion 
against the golden mist which stretched to meet 
the dim, cool shadows of the forest. 

Within, the stillness was broken by a soft froii 
frou of skirts, and Countess Natalie had just 
seated herself in a low bamboo chair, to sigh 
wearily, then quickly change the cadence of her 
mood to smiles, as the Count entered, accompanied 
by Waldemar, to whom he was saying, while they 
lingered for a moment upon the threshold, “The 
weapons are curious, but hardly beautiful ; they 
breathe too clearly of murders they have wrought 
on lonely steppes, though with me taste is doubt- 
less biased by knowledge of their history. You 
may find — Ah ! Madame, welcome. Where have 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


215 


you fled since dejeuner to evade us so success- 
fully ? I have instituted a regular campaign in 
your pursuit.” 

“ Where have I not been,” she ejaculated, smil- 
ing comprehensively upon them both, and letting 
fall into her lap, with little gesture of despair, the 
hand Zaprony had pressed lightly to his lips. 

“ From your eloquent manner, Madame,” inter- 
posed Waldemar, with smiling promptitude, “ I 
should say that you had been either calling or 
shopping.” 

“ I have. Monsieur, a high appreciation of your 
power of acute observation, which makes itself not 
only visible, but felt,” she returned with equal 
pleasantry ; though there was, to his quick ear, 
an intonation that sent the blood surging guiltily, 
to fade as quickly as the tone had done. I have 
been doing both. You see, as usual, you are cor- 
rect. Now, never say you failed to find ingenu- 
ousness a virtue sometimes attributable to woman. 
Yes, I know you would deprecate the pessimism. 
So should I, if I did not understand my sex. But 
to begin with the pleasantest, not at all savoring 
of despair, my visit was to the Baroness von 
Pappenheim-Waggenheim, whose domicile I dis- 
covered all confusion and modistes — though pray 
do not imagine my interest centred in that fact,” 
she averred laughingly, *‘but rather the ‘contract- 


2i6 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


ing figures,’ as Princess Bieberach just now de- 
nominated them. What happiness the future 
depicts in their bright faces ! Life holds for them 
so much ; it looks so fair and promises so many 
years of joy.” Her last phrases spoken almost in 
thought, a mezzo-tone of lingering sadness creep- 
ing upon the bright crescendo with which her 
words began, to leave her silent, looking with 
misty eyes across the golden flood sweeping the 
landscape. 

Zaprony had come quickly to her side, always 
alive to every shading of her mood ; and taking 
both her hands in his had pressed them softly, 
standing thus, for a moment, with his heart re- 
flected in his eyes, bent lovingly on hers. 

‘‘ Ah ! Daggerhof, the pistols. Madame, as 
usual, has put thought of aught else from 
my mind. Here they are,” advancing in broad 
strides towards an antique cabinet. Examine 
them before the daylight grows too late ; they are 
much better studied so.” Handing from out the 
depths with ready mien, betokening perfect knowl- 
edge, two long, slender-barrelled pistols, their 
gleamings chased in intertwining sprays and 
arabesques as sinuous as the vexed knots their 
smoke-flecked throats had flashed asunder, erasing 
in a breath all might of obstacle. 

Waldemar, taking them with a curiosity tern- 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


217 


pered almost to superstition, because of the his- 
tory they held, crossed to the fast-fading light to 
clearer study their prompt, death-dealing mech- 
anism. Then, abruptly turning, he approached 
the Countess, saying, Madame, have you ever 
noted the lightness, the insignificance that may 
quench a mighty purpose ? Feel the small weight 
of this quaint weapon.” 

To his surprise, the greater because of what 
he yesterday had witnessed in that secluded cor- 
ner of the Park, she put both hands before her 
eyes with a sudden gesture strongly remindful of 
that abandon of despair so poignantly awakened 
yesterday in her fancied solitude, a genuine horror 
finding vent in her tone, as, recoiling, she ex- 
claimed : “No, no. Monsieur! I cannot. Take 
them away.” Then, looking up suddenly to dis- 
cover an expression of puzzled surprise dominant 
in his face, a smile played about her mouth. A 
smile apparently aroused by that same puzzled 
gaze, for, laughing softly, though a cloud still 
shadowed on her brow, she said, as he turned to 
do her bidding : “ Well, as you will. Give them 
to me ; I will show you how brave I am.” And 
holding them for an instant, shivering as the steel 
touched her de SuMey gave them back 

again ; starting slightly at the moment as Niko- 
las Nikisoff’s merry voice sounded from beneath 


2i8 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


the portiere, challenging his cousin to a game 
of billard before dinner, in a tone of animation 
which recalled Zaprony from the window, whence 
he had taken another treasure for examination. 

Then, being alone with the Count in the soft 
twilight, she clasped both hands about his arm, 
drawing him slowly across the shadowed parquet 
until they stood together in the deep embrasured 
balcony, her head resting for an instant lightly 
upon his shoulder, as the fresh wind, loosed from 
the meshes of a sun-wove day, scattered its treas- 
ured perfumes in gay wantonness about them. 

“ Do you find the air chill V he asked, in ever- 
ready solicitude, as a brief tremor shook her 
nervously. 

“ Cold, cold } ” she queried vacantly, as if the 
sensation ascribed by him was farthest from her 
thoughts. ‘‘ No ; why do you ask ? ” averting 
her face from his quick glance, which, in the one 
brief instant accorded it, liad noted the pallor 
resting there ; and, putting one hand softly upon 
her cheek, started to find it moist with tears. 

“Natalushka, Natalushka, you are ill! You 
are overtaxing your strength. I am glad, thankful 
beyond expression that this ball at Wilhelma 
ends it all and we shall soon be once more alone 
again,” lingering with prolonged tenderness, 
bereft of deep concern just now conveyed, upon 
the words alone again.” 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


219 


“ Are you happy, then, with only me ? Do you 
think that you could live on and on, through all 
the years allotted to our span with only Natal- 
ushka ? That if some dreadful woe swept on me, 
barring me from society, you could find joy as you 
now fancy, centering all in all with me ? Look 
into your heart and see.” 

Her sentences had been pronounced with a 
quick abruptness of delivery, as if with difficulty 
the deep emotion prompting them was held in 
check. Then, laughing with a chill, forced un- 
naturalness, which, from the pained expression in 
his face, wounded deeper than her tears, pro- 
ceeded nervously, disregarding his quick, impetu- 
ous assurances as he gathered her closely in his 
arms : — 

No, no, do not answer me. You shall never be 
called upon for such grave test. Never! never!” 
with increasing, passionate eagerness which sought 
confirmation in its own earnestness. “We will 
live on and on together, in this bright, beautiful 
world, until, like those butterflies I chose our coun- 
terparts that day upon the terrace, our sense of 
existence flutters out together into a great infinity, 
which can hold no torture mightier than a separ- 
ation here, no bliss beyond our union.” Throw- 
ing her arms passionately about his neck, she drew 
his dark, handsome face down close to hers, kiss- 


220 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


ing him again and again. “ There, there ; this 
foolish weakness is past. I am strong, quite 
strong now ; we shall never, never be separated, 
but, like the butterflies, one, even in death.” A 
grand positiveness ringing in her tone, trium- 
phant in its certainty. A positiveness that 
seemed to resolve itself into the fixed contour 
of her face, in which a mighty purpose sat en- 
throned with powerful intent that gave it majesty 
and peace, as, some hours later, she softly raised 
the portiere veiling the door of Count Zaprony’s 
dressing-room to let it fall again, apparently sat- 
isfied on hearing his quick, firm steps echo faintly 
through the portal. 

Hastening, without loss of a second’s space, 
down the long stairway ablaze with mellow lights, 
her sombre robe gliding in noiseless rhythm with 
her hurried footfall ; starting suddenly and putting 
both hands to her heart as a quick, sharp voice 
sounded close in her ear : ‘‘Ah! my dear. Forgive 
me, I frightened you in my thoughtlessness, but I 
wanted you to see how well I look.” 

“ Charmantey Madame, charmaiite. I have always 
remarked that mauve is particularly becoming to 
you,” was the answer, given quickly and in a tone 
that veiled with marked endeavor a desire for im- 
mediate release. 

“But ciel^ child. You are not going to wear 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


221 


that black thing.? Though being both a pretty 
woman and a rich one, you might paint yourself 
in stripes and be quite the rage ; except that, on 
the whole, I rather think the stripes would create 
more genuine impression.” 

“ I have not made my toilette yet, Madame ; 
indeed I rather think it will create a small sen- 
sation when I do, but hardly equal to the one you 
picture.” 

“Then fly, hasten. It is already terribly late, 
and if it were I, why, I should not get there 
before morning. I had Jeanette begin to do me 
up two hours and a half ago ; now, as she has just 
finished, I intend taking a little well-earned rest 
before departing. Here comes Count de Tocque- 
ville ; he may keep me awake until a sight of the 
King of Holland frightens me out of closing my 
eyes for a month.” 

But, seldomwise. Count de Tocqueville seemed 
loth to linger, excusing himself under pretext of 
escorting Natalie to her apartments that the all- 
important event of her toilette might be delayed 
no longer. 

Already the clock in the courtyard had tolled 
forth the quarter before eleven, but still he de- 
layed, saying that he wished to speak with her, 
though remaining silent until, following his bent, 
they had reached the end of the great corridor 


222 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


and stood alone — the house wrapped in a stillness 
equal to that preceding dawn. 

“Natalie! Natalie I what is it.? what does all 
this mean .? I have sought in vain to see you 
alone since last night at dinner,” he pleaded, his 
breath coming short and irregular, both hands 
clutching his heart as if to steady its beatings 
sufficiently to bear the tidings he felt her ready 
to pronounce. 

“ I am at a loss to know the import of your 
words,” she answered, a startled light flashing 
into her tawny eyes, to veil again when she felt 
his upon her. 

“ Oh I you know what I mean — those strange 
resemblances. I heard it all last night at dinner. 
I heard Nikisoff’s words ; heard of your sudden 
indisposition ; saw the agony creep into your 
face. There it is now, it has never left it ! My 
God ! tell me, is he escaped — or — sane .? ” And 
he sank against the casement, great drops of 
sweat dripping from his brow, while she caught 
and supported him, closing her eyes and shutting 
close her lips for one brief instant, then began in 
a tone, soothing, allaying, as of one assuaging the 
frightened grief of a child. 

“To what excess do you let this foolish idea 
lead you .? Your life is too much to me, who hold 
you so dear, to have you risk it thus. Dismiss this 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 223 

foolish fancy from your brain ; he is safe. Keep 
well, grow strong again, against the coming of a 
day when I may need you more than to defend 
me from an idle fantasy.” 

While she thus calmly reasoned, one hand, left 
free from weight of his support, clutched at her 
draperies nervously, convulsively, until she saw 
his eyelids faintly flutter, then open, wearily. 

*‘Ah! I am foolish,” he began weakly, very 
foolish. I might not be so if I were my old self ; 
this trouble has made me less a man : or, maybe, 
it is my great desire to save you from all harm, to 
stand between yourself and ill, that makes me so.” 

You have no need to do aught else than groly 
better. That I crave to see more now than any- 
thing. I am so happy, life holds everything for 
me. No woman could wish for, dream of more. 
So rest content.” And stooping, she kissed him 
lightly upon the forehead, an occurrence with her, 
being little given to such token of affection, rarely 
unusual. Then exclaimed in startled tone, in 
which affright had strong predominance, hardl}^ 
accordant with the import of her words : — 

“ There is eleven o’clock ! I must be going. I 
have not made my toilette.” 

But he detained her yet some moments longer, 
lingering still upon the landing even after she had 
closed her door to open presently with wary can- 


224 Cleopatra’s daughter. 

tion and peer from between the heavy portieres. 
Watching his uncertain loiterings wild with sup- 
pressed haste and excitement until, at last, he 
slowly passed her veiled concealment, smiling 
softly to himself in quiet content. 

Drawing her breath quickly, pantingly, as she 
gathered her draperies closely about her, she sped 
on, on through unfrequented corridors, pausing 
now and then in stifled breathlessness to look 
about her with the air of one pursued, starting at 
shadows, repressing a scream when a great cur- 
tain flapped in the wind ; but always clasping one 
hand closely to the bosom of her dress upon some- 
thing held as treasure there. 

She had reached the door of Prince Eugene’s 
suite. Noisily, more noisily than it had ever 
sounded, creaked the door upon its hinges. Star- 
tled, she looked about her, pulling it shut again 
very slowly, warily, to avoid all sound as it swayed 
heavily in place. 

The moonlight flooded the vast apartment, 
making silver arabesque upon antique furniture 
and sombre draperies, which stood out in massive 
folds, as if carved in stone. 

Softly she crept across the floor, breathing 
quickly, flutteringly, as if the damp cold air of the 
long-closed rooms choked in her throat. A quar- 
ter past eleven boomed forth in one long, rever- 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


225 


berating stroke that sounded like a knell, to make 
her break forth afresh in shivering ; the casement 
swung back slowly, and she started with sudden 
wariness, scarcely breathing, as there, beyond, 
distinct in the moonlight, clear outlined against 
the star-swung sky, against the fog-wreaths coiling 
white and ghostly from out the valley, rose the 
silhouette of a man, poised swayingly without the 
terrace railing, one hand grasping the balustrade, 
the other despoiling the gloires de Dijon of all 
their beauty as one branch after another was 
tossed recklessly upon the pavement. 

Now was a chance to give her freedom, life, 
joy, undisturbed and peaceful while the heart- 
beats told. Life, with all her soul held dear, that 
made her life itself. 

One word escaped her, that one word “ Nar- 
cisse ! ” 

The night-wind must have borne its burden to 
his ear, for he bent upwards, as if about to look 
upon her ; but quicker still, before his eyes had 
lifted to the light, her hand grasped at her bosom, 
a gleam of steel, a faint glare, a thread of fire 
flashing outwards. 

The hand loosed its hold upon the railing. Both 
arms flung wildly above his head and the figure 
swayed outwards, plunging suddenly into the 
abyss below, rock-gorged, foam-swept, that pierced 


226 


Cleopatra’s daughter. 


aloft huge juts and spars like dragon’s teeth, to 
mar all trace of recognition from a being cast into 
its black depths. 

A smile triumphant, beaming, glittered in her 
eyes with mighty joy, as she moved a step in 
shadow to toss the pistol, a ray of swerving light, 
far out across the terrace into yawning gloom. 

But as she fled across the threshold a wild cry 
trembled on the great stillness. There, before 
her, laughing with a chill joy all familiar to the 
monks of San Juan de Rez, his former keepers, 
stood Narcisse de Tocqueville, still laughing, with 
peal on peal of mocking laughter, as she fell prone 
at his feet above a dark shadow deeper than those 
hovering mistily over it, bathed in the moonlight. 


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Two admirable stories by W. H. H. Murray, in both which appears John 
Norton, the trapper, a character that promises to become as much of a favorite as 
is the hero of the Leather Stocking novels. These stories have a bracing out-door 
freshness and a delightfully crisp realism ; are vigorous in tone, and strong and 
picturesque in the relation, Taken altogether, they may be pronounced the most 
artistic of Mr. Murray’s excursions into the realm of fiction, and fascinating 
reading generally.” — Saturday Evening Gazette. 


DEACONS. By W. H. H. Murray. i6mo. Paper, 50 cents. Cloth, 75 
cents. 

Mr. Murray is an expert in the art of character drawing; he can manipulate 
humor and pathos with equal facility. No one will gainsay their freshness and 
individuality. — N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. 


ADIRONDACK ADVENTURES. “ In The Wilderness ; or, Camp Life 
in the Adirondacks.” By W. H. H. Murray. lamo. Illustrated. Paper, 
50 cents. Cloth, $1.25 

In the “Adventures in the Wilderness,” W. H. H. Murray strikes the happy 
hunting-ground, which long ago earned for him the popular title, “Adirondack 
Murray,” and here, as in his other books, he fairly revels in the stirring incident, 
lively and faithful conception of character, and the powerful but delightful de- 
scription of natural scenery^ which have already given his work an enviable and 
lasting place in American literature.” — Nashville American. 


ADIRONDACK TALES. By W. H. H. Murray. Containing “John 
Norton’s Christmas,” “Henry Herbert’s Thanksgiving,” “A Strange Visitor,” 
“ Lost in the Woods,” “A Jolly Camp,” “ Was it Suicide ? ” “ The Gambler’s 
Death,” “The Old Beggar’s Dog,” “The Ball,” “Who was He.” Illus- 
trated. i2mo. 300 pages. $1.25. 

Short stories in Mr. Murray’s best vein, — humorous, pathetic, full of the 
spirit of the woods. 


CIVILIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES. By Matthew 
Arnold. And other Essays concerning America. i6mo. Unique paper 
boards. 50 cents. Cloth, uncut, $i 25. The cloth binding matches the 
uniform edition of his collected works. 

Comprises the critical essays, which created so much discussion, namely, 
“ General Grant, an Estimate.” “A Word about America,” “A Word more 
about America,” and “ Civilization in the United States.” 

*** This collection gathers in the great critic’s last contribution to literature. 


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HOW TO WRITE THE HISTORY OF A FAMILY. By 

W. P. W. Phillimore, M.A., B.C.L. Cr. Svo. Tastefully printed in 
antique style, handsomely bound. $2,00. 

This is the best compendious genealogist’s guide that has yet been pub- 
lished, and Mr. Phillimore deserves the thanks and appreciation of all lovers 
of family history. — Relinquary. 

THE KINSHIP OF MEN. An Argument from Pedigrees ; or. Gene- 
alogy Viewed as a Science. By Henry Kendall. Cr. Svo. Cloth, $2.00. 
The old jjedigree-hunting was a sign of pride and pretension; the modern 
IS simply dictated by the desire to know whatever can be known. The One 
advanced itself by the methods of immoral advocacy; the other proceeds by 
those of scientific research . — Spectator (London). 

RECORDS AND RECORD SEARCHING. A Guide to the Gene- 
alogist and Topographer. By Walter Rye. Svo. Cloth, $2.00. 

This book places in the hands of the Antiquary and Genealogist, and 
others interested in kindred studies, a comprehensive guide to the enormous 
mass of material which is available in his researches, showing what it con- 
sists of, and where it can be found. 

ANCESTRAL TABLETS. A Collection of Diagrams for Pedigrees, 
so arranged that Eight Generations of the Ancestors of any Person may 
be recorded in a connected and simple form. By William H. Whit- 
more, A.M. Seventh edition. On heavy parchment paper, large 4to, 
tastefully and strongly bound, Roxburgh style. Price $2.00. 

“ No one with the least bent for genealogical research ever examined this 
ingeniously compact substitute for the ‘ family tree’ without longing to own 
it. It provides for the recording of eight lineal generations, and is a per- 
petual incentive to the pursuit of one’s ancestry.” — Nation. 

ANCESTRAL QUEST LEAFLETS. Blanks with printed questions 
for use in compiling family records, biographical notes, etc. Three sheets 
perforated for tying. 10 cents. 


Works by William H. Rideing. 

THACKERAY’S LONDON : HIS HAUNTS AND THE 
SCENES OF HIS NOVELS. With two original Portraits (etched 
and engraved) ; a fac-simile of a page of the original manuscript of “ The 
Newcomes ;” together with several exquisitely engraved woodcuts. Square 
i2mo. Cloth, gilt top, in box. $1.00. Fourth edition. 

little upstart, a Novel. Third edition. i6mo. Cloth. $1.35. 

‘‘ As a study of literary and would-be literary life it is positively brilliant. 
Manx well-known figures are drawn with a few sweeping touches. The 
book, as a story, is interesting enough for the most experienced taste, and, 
as a satire, it is manly and healtliy .” — yohn Boyle O'Reilly. 


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Lives of Distinguished Americans. 

MATTHEW GALBRAITH PERRY. A typical American Naval 
Officer. By William Elliot Griffis, author of “The Mikado’s Em- 
pire,” and “Corea: the Hermit Nation.” Cr. Svo, 459 pages, gilt top, 
with two portraits and seven illustrations. $2.00. 

“ Sure of a favorable reception, and a permanent place in public and pri- 
vate libraries.” — N. T. Evening Post. 

“Of unusual interest to every student of American history.” — Nat. Baptist, 
“His biography will be one of the naval classics .” — Army and Navy 
Journal. 

THADDEUS STEVENS, AMERICAN STATESMAN, AND 
FOUNDER OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. A memoir by 
E. B. Callendar. With portrait. Cr. Svo. Cloth, gilt top. $1.25. 

A biography of one of the most interesting characters in the whole range 
of American Politics, whose work must be understood thorouglily to gain 
accurate knowledge of the secret forces operating during his times, 1792 to 
1S69. 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Philosopher and Seer. An Esti- 
mate of his Character and Genius. By A. Bronson Alcott. With 
portraits and other illustrations. Foolscap octavo. Gilt top. fi.oo. 

A book about Emerson, written by the one man who stood nearest to him 
of all men. It is an original and vital contribution to Emersonia ; like a 
portrait of one of the old masters painted by his own brush. 

JOHN BROWN. By Hermann Von Holst, author of “Constitu- 
tional History of the United States,” &c., together with an introduction 
and appendix by Frank P. Stearns, a poem by Mr. Wason, and a letter 
describing John Brown’s grave. Illustrated. 16 mo, gilt top. $1.25. 

This book, the author of which is so well known by his “ Constitutional 
History,” and by his biography of John C. Calhoun, cannot fail to be of 
interest to all students of American history, who appreciate a calm, impar- 
tial criticism of a man and an episode which have been universally and 
powerfully discussed. 

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF COMMODORE CHARLES 
MORRIS. With heliotype portrait after Ary Scheffer. 1 vol. Svo. 
1 1 1 pages. Paper cover. 25 cts. 

A valuable addition to the literature of American history; a biography of 
one who, in the words of Admiral Farragut, was “America’s grandest 
seaman.” 

POEMS BY GEORGE LUNT. Author of “ Old New England 
Traits,” etc. Handsomely printed. lamo. $1.25. 

Mr. Hunt’s poetical reputation in the world of letters is too familiar to re- 
quire any formal introduction of this volume to the public attention. 


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DAVID KENNEDY, THE SCOTTISH SINGER; Reminis- 
cences of liis Life and Work by Marjory Kennedy. With portrait 
and illustrations. Svo. Cloth. 479 pages. $2.00. 

A highly interesting narrative of this humorous and pathetic singer, who 
will be remembered the world over, not only by Scotchmen, but by all those 
who, at any time, have formed a part of his delighted audiences, and who 
recall the inimitable manner in which he rendered all that is best in Scottish 
poetry and song. Genuine fun and drollery, keen observation of men and 
manners, notes of travel in many cities, the vicissitudes of an artistic career, 
are all depicted here with force and style. 

RICHARD WAGNER AND HIS POETICAL WORK, from 

“ Rienzi ” to “ Parsifal.” By Judith Gautier. Translated by L. S. J. 
With portrait, izmo. $1.25. 

ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, DEAN OF WESTMINSTER. 

His Life, Work, and Teachings. With fine etched portrait. By Grace 
A. Oliver, author of “ Maria Edgeworth.” i2mo, 40S pages. $1.50. 
The very kindly reception given to this volume has caused a demand for 
four editions in as many months ; this includes an English edition, which 
has been called for by Dean Stanley’s friends. The cordial- approval of the 
Dean’s immediate family, his sister, Mrs. Vaughan, and others, has been 
echoed by many, among them Her Majesty the Queen, who has accepted a 
copy of the book, sent to her at the suggestion of Lady Stanley at Alderley. 

THE EGGS OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. By C. J. May- 
nard. Complete in eight parts, and illustrated with numerous full-page plates, 
carefully drawn on stone, and accurately colored by hand by the author. Sold 
by subscription. Price, 1^4.00, or 50 cents per part. 

“ It is a unique and interesting work, dealing as it does with the eggs of all the 
birds of America. It is the only complete and authoritative work upon the subject 
ever published. The author has been careful to simplify his terms as much as 
possible so as to make himself interesting to the lay reader as well as the scientist.” 
— N. Y. Graphic. 


NATURALIST’S GUIDE. A Complete Manual and Text-Book for the 
Taxidermist or Student of Natural History, with full directions for collecting, 
preserving, and mounting Birds, Mammals, Fishes, etc. By C. J. Maynard, 
author of” The Eggs of North America.” 25. 

A popular work that aims to encourage the young to engage in the ennobling 
study of Natural History. 

LOG OF THE ARIEL IN THE GULF OF MAINE. Ulus- 
tnited by L. S. Irsen. From the press of the Photo-Gravure Company, 
New York. Oblong, boards. $2.00. 


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Bulfinch’s Mythology. 

THEAGE OF CHIVALRY; Or Legends of King Arthur. “ Stories 

of the Round Table,” ” The Crusades,” “Robin Hood,” etc. By Thomas 
Bulfinch. a new and enlarged edition. Revised by Rev. E. E. Hale. 
Large i2mo. Illustrated. $2.^0. 

In “The Age of Fable,” Mr. Bulfinch endeavored to impart the pleasure of 
classical learning to the English reader by presenting the stories of Pagan mythol- 
ogy in a form adapted to modern taste. In this volume the attempt has been 
made to treat in the same way the stories of the second “ age of fable” — the age 
which witnessed the dawn of the several states of modern Europe. 

THE AGE OF FABLE; Or, Beauties of Mythology. By Thomas 

Bulfinch. A new and enlarged edition, containing over 100 illustrations from 
ancient paintings and statuary. Revised by Rev. E. E. Hale. Large lamo. 

^2.50* 

Young readers will find this book a sonrce of entertainment: those more ad- 
vanced, a useful companion in their reading ; those who travel and visit museums 
and gallaries of art, an interpreter of paintings and sculptures. 

LEGENDS OF CHARLEMAGNE; Or, Romance of the Middle 

Ages. Stories of Paladin and Saracen. By Thomas Bulfinch. lamo. 
Illustrated. $2.50. 


Prof. Clark Murray’s Works. 

SOLOMON MAIMON: An Autobiography. Translated from the 
German, with Additions and Notes, by Prof. J. Clark Murray. Cr. Svo. 
Cloth. 307 pages. $2.00. 

The London Spectator says; “Dr. Clark Murray has had the rare good 
fortune of first presenting this singularly vivid booK in an English transla- 
tion as pure and lively as if it were an original, and an original by a classic 
English writer.” 

George Eliot, in “ Daniel Deronda,” mentions it as ‘^that wonderful bit of 
autobiognaphy— the life of the Polish Jew, Solomon Maimon;” and Mil- 
man, in his “ History of the Jews,” refers to it as a curious and rare book. 

HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY. By Prof. J. Clark Murray, 
LL.D., Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy, M’Gill College, Mon- 
treal. Cr. Svo. 2d edition, enlarged and improved. $1.75. 

Clearly and simply written, with illustrations so Avell chosen that the dul- 
lest student can scarcely fail to take an interest in the Subject- 
Adopted for use in colleges in Scotland, England, Canada, and the United 
States. 

Prof. Murray’s g’ood fortune in bringing to light the “ Maimon Memoirs,” 
together with the increasing popularity of his “ Handbook of Psycholog^y,” 
has attracted the attention of the intellectual world, giving him a position 
with the leaders of thought of the present age. His writings are at once 
original and suggestive. 


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Books for the Seeker and for the Sorrowful. 

LIFE’S PROBLEMS. HERE AND HEREAFTER. An auto- 
biography. By George Truesdelle Flanders. i6 mo. Cloth, gilt 
top. $1.25. Second edition revised. 

“It is a real spiritual biograpliy — an inner life honestly revealed. . . 

Such a cheerful spirit animates the book, a spirit so full of spiritual buoyancy, 
in harmony with the gospel of love, seeking the good and the beautiful — this 
in itself communicates hope, courage, and faith .’’ — Boston Post. 

THE MYSTERY OF PAIN : A BOOK ADDRESSED TO THE 
SORROWFUL. ByjAMES Hinton, M.D. With an introduction by 
James R. Nichols, author of “Whence? What? Where?” i6mo. 
Cloth, gilt top. $1.00. 

“ No word of praise can add anything to the value of this little work, 
which has now taken its place as one of the classics of religious literature. 
The tender, reverent, and searching spirit of the author has come as a 
great consolation and help to many persons.” — JN'ew York Critic. 

WHAT SHALL MAKE US WHOLE? or, Thoughts in the direc- 
tion of Man’s Spiritual and Physical Integrity. By Helen Bigelow 
Merriman. Third edition. i6mo, unique boards. 75 cents. 

An endeavor to present in a popular way the philosophy and practice of 
mental healing. 

The author does not claim for her essay either completeness or permanent 
value, but hopes “ to fix a few points and establish a few relative values, 
in anticipation of the time when human research and experience shall 
complete the pictures.” 


Popular Books of Travel. 

A SUMMER CRUISE ON THE COAST OF NEW ENG- 
LAND. By Robert Carter. With an Introduction by Rossiter 
Johnson. i2mo. Cloth, with Map. $1.50. 

A new edition of one of the most fascinating of salt-water yarns, full of 
genial humor, vivid word-paiuting, accurate information, and practical 
“wrinkles.” A classic by reason of the esteem in which it is held by 
yachtsmen, and as a literary production equal to anything of the kind in the 
Anglo-Saxon tongue. 

MIDNIGHT SUNBEAMS, OR BITS OF TRAVEL THROUGH 
THE LAND OF THE NORSEMAN. By Edwin Coolidge 
Kimball. On fine paper, foolscap Svo, tastefully and strongly bound, 
with vignette. Cloth. $1.25. 

Pronounced by Scandinavians to be accurate in its facts and descriptions, and 
of great interest to all who intend to travel in or have come to Norway or 
Sweden. 

BOATING TRIPS ON NEW ENGLAND RIVERS. By Henry 
Parker Fellows. Illustrated by Willis H. Beals. Square 121110. $1.25. 


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Popular Books of Travel. 

AALESUND TO TETUAN. By Chas. R. Corning. A Volume of 
Travel. i2mo. 400 pages. Cloth. $2.00. 

Table of Contents. — Portsmouth — Isle of Wight — Channel Islands — 
Normandy — Nice — Monte Carlo — Genoa — Naples and its Environments — 
Rome — Verona — Venice — Norway — Sweden — St. Petersburg — Moscow — 
Warsaw — Berlin — Up the Rhine — Barcelona — Valencia — Seville — Cadiz — 
Morocco — Gibraltar — Granada — Madrid and the Royal Wedding — Bull 
Fights — Escurial — Biarritz — Bordeaux — Paris. 

THE LIVES AND TRAVELS OF LIVINGSTONE AND 

STANLEY. Covering their entire career in Southern and Central 
Africa, carefully prepared from the most authentic sources. A thrilling 
narrative of the adventures, discoveries, experiences, and achievements of 
the greatest explorers of modern times, in a wild and wonderful country. 
By Rev. J. E. Chambliss. Richly illustrated. Large Svo, 760 pages. 
$2.50, 

This work includes Livingstone’s early life, preparation for his life-work, 
a sketch of Africa as known before his going there, his discovery by Stan- 
ley, the three great mysteries of the past five thousand years solved by 
Stanley, etc. 

PLEASANT HOURS IN SUNNY LANDS IN A TOUR 
AROUND THE WORLD. By Isaac Lewis, A. M., LL.B. i6nio. 
Illustrated. $1.25. 

“ ‘ Pleasant Hours in Sunny Lands ’ is the title of a handsomely printed, 
artistically illustrated story of travel round the world, by Isaac N. Lewis. 
Varied and interesting scenes and incidents are brightly described by the 
author, and there is a commendable absence of trivial details. The illus- 
trations are mainly full-page photographic views of scenes that came under 
the author’s observation.” — Boston Globe. 

MEXICO. ByA.F. Bandelier. With heliotype plates, woodcuts, map, 
etc. Large Svo. 336 pages. Second edition. $5.00. 

“ The value and the popularity of Bandelier’s ‘Archaeological Reconnoi- 
sance into Mexico ’ have been demonstrated by the demand for a second 
edition of the work, which has just been published.” — Detroit Free Press, 

OVER THE WORLD. Travels, adventures, and achievements, con- 
taining the most interesting narratives of celebrated travellers and ex- 
plorers, life and death on the ocean, noted military campaigns, personal 
adventures, etc., with numerous maps and engravings. The whole illus- 
trating human life and character among many nations. By Henry Howe, 
author of “ The Great West,” etc. Svo. S-jS pages. $3.50. 

SWITZERLAND AND THE SWISS. Historical and Descriptive. 
By S. H. M. Byers, American Consul. Illustrated. Svo, leatherette 
$1.50. 


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Thrilling Novels in the Style of the Modern French 
Sensational School. 

MR. AND MRS. MORTON. A Novel. 9th thousand. i2mo. Cloth, 
$1.25. Paper, 50 cents. 

A powerfully told story of domestic misunderstanding which turns upon an 
event of so startling a nature that the reader’s attention is at once arrested and 
held to the end. Without revealing the plot of the book, we can say that it con- 
cerns the marvellous effects of atavism and the influence of heredity, and is totally 
unexpected, yet probable withal. 

SILKEN THREADS: A DETECTIVE STORY. By the author of 
“ Mr. and Mrs. Morton.” i6mo. Cloth, $1.25. Paper, 50 cents. 

One of the best stories of its kind that has appeared of late, and worthy, in its 
construction and elaboration of detail, to be placed beside Gaborian and Du 
Boisgobey, while it has not that tediousness which sometimes renders these 
authors distasteful to American readers. Wilkie Collins never invented a more 
ingeniously constructed plot or told it in a more interesting way. 

THE DISK; A TALE OF TWO PASSIONS. By E. A. Robinson 
and Geor«e A. Wali.. i2mo. Cloth, ^ 5 i. 00. Paper, 50 cents. 

When Jules Verne wrote the marvellous story Twenty Thousand Leagues under 
the Sea the world was startled at the many wonderful uses to which electricity was 
put in the working of the “Nautilus,” but we have lived to see many of these 
wonders, the description of which, at that time, seemed like fairy tales become the 
commonplaces of every day life. The authors of “ The Disk ” have woven into a 
powerful and stirring story other marvellous uses for electricity, the most promi- 
nent of which, that of “ seeing over the wire,” has within a few months been pro- 
nounced by Edison not only possible but sure to be so perfected in the near future 
as to come into as common use as the telephone and electric light of to-day. The 
story is a narrative of the supreme power of the two passions of love and science 
upon different organizations, and is equally good in the charm of its love scenas 
and in the weirdness and power of its description of occult investigations. 


ROMANCE OF A SHOP. Anovel. By Miss Amy Levy. i2mo. $1.50. 

“A story of four sisters, three of them very young and very pretty, who 
were suddenly bereft of parents and fortune, and left to solve the problem of 
life with their own brains and their own gentle hands. How they did it Is 
related in the ‘ Romance,’ while the love passages of the girls lend a charm- 
ing interest to the narrative .” — Sprhtgfield Republican. 

THE SPHINX IN AUBREY PARISH. By N. H. Chamberlain. 

Illustrated. i2mo. $1.50* 

The instantaneous popularity of “A New England Farm House,” the 
author’s first venture in the field of fiction (which has been read and re-read 
by all classes with an eagerness little short of that which hailed the appear- 
ance of the “ Scarlet Letter” a generation ago), has led the publishers to 
induce Mr. Chamberlain to consent to a companion volume. Wholly distinct 
from the first book in its plot, scenery, and location, it will be found as inter- 
esting, and equally as strong in its animation and sustained energy of 
action. 


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Translations of Two Powerful German Novels by Authors 
New to American Readers. 

THE LAST VON RECKENBURG. By Louise von Francois. 

Translated from the third German edition. 370 pages. Cr. Svo. Cloth, 
gilt. $1.50. 

MM. Erckmann-Chatrian have depicted the feverish excitement of France 
(hiring the height of Napoleon’s meteor-like blaze; this equally powerful 
romance shows the reaction in Germany immediately after his downfall, 
when the pulse of Europe was striving to regain its normal beat. 


THE MONK’S WEDDING. A novel. By C. F. Meyer. Cr. Svo. 

unique binding, gilt top. $1.25. Pajjer, 50 cents. 

This is an Italian story, written by a German, and translated by an Amer- 
ican, and purports to be narrated by the poet Dante at the hospitable hearth 
of his patron. Can Grande. Those who have any acquaintance with the un- 
scrupulous machinations of the Italian, and particularly the Italian ecclesi- 
astic, will have little difficulty in conjuring up what a grim, lurid tale of 
secret crime and suffering a “ Monk’s Wedding ” is sure to be. It is of sus- 
tained and absorbing interest, full of delicate touches and flashes of passion, 
a tragedy which cannot fail to leave an impression of power upon the mind. 


ZORAH : A LOVE STORY OF MODERN EGYPT. By Elizabeth 
Balch. Cr. Svo. Cloth elegant, 1.25. Paper, 50 cents. 

It is an excellent study of the political and social atmosphere surrounding 
official life in Cairo and Alexandria at the present day, with its underlying stratum 
of Oriental romanticism, and the constantly varying stream of Western influences 
which are slowly but surely shaping the destinies of the country. 

“ Depicted with artistic power, and, as a love story, it is of absorbing interest. 
Told with all the rich coloring of the East.” — Boston Home Journal. 

“Cleverly conceived and written.” — Boston Globe. 

“Well worth reading.” — Julian Hawthorne. 

“ Shows a very keen observation and a marked descriptive faculty.” — Church- 
man. 

“Its very incongruities make it readable.” — Philadelphia Times. 

THE TERRACE OF MON DESIR. A Novel of Russian Life. By 
Sophie Radford de Meissner. i2mo. Cloth limp, elegant, $1.25. Third 
edition. Paper, 50 cents. 

This novel is written by the American wife of a Russion diplomat, who, by 
virtue of her position, is well qualified to describe the scenes and characters 
which she has chosen to present ; she writes with the clear, unbiassed view of her 
native country, and shows, perhaps for the first time, an unpredjudiced picture of 
Russian society. 

CLEOPATRA’S DAUGHTER. A romance of a Branch of Roses. By 
William Armstrong, author of “Theckla.” i6mo. l^i.oo. 


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Travesties, Parodies, and Jeux d’Esprit. 

THE IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS OF HIS EXCELLENCY 
AND DAN. By C. W. Taylor. With 40 full-page silhouette illus- 
trations by F. H. Blair. 90 pages. i6mo. Paper, 25 cents. 

“ It is fun for the masses, wholly irrespective of political parties, — such 
good-natured fun that even those that it satirizes might well laugh. . . 

Probably the most humorous skit ever produced.” 

MACTE LISTER TRIUMPHPHATOR. A moist-merry, humid- 
hilarious, anti-septic, vademecum of internal surgery, for the ambitious 
modern physician. By. Dr. Risorius SANTORINI. Translated by 
“ Famulus.” i6mo. Paper, 35 cts. 

ROLLO’S JOURNEY TO CAMBRIDGE. A Tale of the Adven- 

tures of the Historic Holiday Family at Harvard under the New Regime. 
With twenty-six illustrations, full-page frontispiece, and an illuminated 
cover of striking gorgeousness. By Francis G. Attwood. i vol. 
Imperial 8vo. Limp. London toy-book style. Third and enlarged 
edition. 75 cents. 

** All will certainly relish the delicious satire in both text and illustra- 
tions.” — Boston Traveller. 

“ A brilliant and witty piece of fun.” — Chicago Tribune, 

EVERY MAN HIS OWN POET; OR, THE INSPIRED 
SINGER’S RECEIPT BOOK. By W. H. Mallock, author of 
“ New Republic,” etc. Eleventh edition. i6mo. 24 cents. 

A most enjoyable piece of satire, witty, clever, and refined. In society 
and literary circles its success, both here and abroad, has been immense. 


MARGARET; and the SINGER’S STORY. By Effie Douglass 
Putnam. Daintily bound in white, stamped in gold and color, gilt edges. 
i6mo. $1.25. 

A collection of charming poems, many of which are familiar through the 
medium of the magazines and newspaper press, with some more ambitious 
flights, amply fulfilling the promise of the shorter efforts. Tender and pas- 
toral, breathing the simple atmosphere of the fields and woods. 

MAHALY SAWYER; OR PUTTING YOURSELF IN HER 
PLACE. ByS. E. Douglass. i6mo. Cloth. $1.25. 

This is a 'very curious and a remarkably interesting little book. The 
Christian Register, one of the ablest of critical reviews, says : “If the 
number of people vitally interested in the motif of this bright story should 
all be the number of its readers, it would have a circulation equal to ‘ Uncle 
Tom’s Cabin.’ . , It is a realistic tale, which, in its way, puts Mr. How- 
ells to shame.” 


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ALL MATTER TENDS TO ROTATION, OR THE ORIGIN 

OF ENERGY. A New Hypothesis which throws Light upon all the 
Phenomena of Nature. Electricity, Magnetism, Gravitation, Light, Heat, 
and Chemical Action explained upon Mechanical Principles and traced to a 
Single Source. By Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton, M.A. Vol. i. 
Origin of Energy ; Electrostatics and Magnetism. Containing loo Illus- 
trations, including Fine Steel Portraits of Faraday and Maxwell. Hand- 
somely bound in cloth. Svo. 340 pages. Price $3.00. Net. 

In this volume the author has utilized the modern conception of lines of 
force originated by Faraday, and afterwards developed mathematically by 
Prof. J. Clerk Maxwell, and he has reached an explanation of electrical 
and magnetic phenomena which has been expected by physicists on both 
continents. 

electricity. What It Is, Where It Comes From, and H»w It is 
Made to Do Mechanical Work. By Thomas Kirwan. New enlarged 
edition, izmo, paper. Illustrated. 30 cents. 

Any one who wants to know what electricity is, where it comes from, and 
how it is made to do mechanical work, will find in this little volume the 
complete answer, in concise and untechnical terms, to his questionings. 

THE ESSENTIALS OF THE METRIC SYSTEM. With full 

Explanations of its Theoretical Principles and numerous Examples for 
Practice. A handbook for self-instruction. By George Jackson, A.M. 
i6mo. Cloth, 50 cts. 

THE SKETCHES OF THE CLANS OF SCOTLAND, with 

twenty-two full-page colored plates of Tartans. By Clansmen J. M. P.- 
F. W. S. Large Svo. Cloth, $2.00. 

The object of this treatise is to give a concise account of the origin, seat, 
and characteristics of the Scottish clans, together with a representation of 
the distinguishing tartan worn by each. The illustrations are line sped- 
mens of color work, all executed in Scotland. 

STRAY LEAVES FROM NEWPORT. By Mrs. Wm. Lamont 

Wheeler. Exquisitely printed and most beautifully bound in tapestry, 
white and gold. Gilt top. Uncut edges, izmo. $1.50. Paper, 50 cents. 

“ The author is familiar with every detail of the social life at Newport, in 
which she has long been a prominent figure, and the types of character she 
presents will be readily recognized as direct copies from nature. She is in- 
timately acquainted with the scenes she describes, and the literary quality of 
her book is of a cliaracter that will recommend it to readers of cultivated 
tastes.” — Gazette. 

LOVE POEMS AND SONNETS. By Owen Innslv. With vignette. 
Third edition. 16 mo, limp clotli, gilt top, uncut edges. $1.00. 


DeWolfe^ Fiske <Sn Co. 


Publishers, 

Booksellers, 

Library Agents. 


BOSTON. 


Standard and Popular Books. 


Herman Grimm’s Works. 

THE LIFE OF RAPHAEL as shown in his principal works. From the 
German of Herman Grimm, author of “The Life of Michael Angelo,” etc. 
With frontispiece, after Braun, of the recently discovered portrait, outlined 
by Raphael in chalk. Cr. 8vo. Cloth. $2.00. 

“ The whole book is written in the highest spirit of criticism, and will greatly 
enrich the store of English works on art.” — Boston Post. 

ESSAYS ON LITERATURE. From the German of Herman Grimm, 
uniform with “ The Life of Raphael.” New and enlarged edition, carefully 
corrected. Cr. 8vo. Cloth. $2.00. 

“There has been written no finer, more appreciative, or more just essay on 
Emerson than that found in the pages of this book ; and every admirer of Emer- 
son will be glad to read this tribute of a ‘ foreign friend.’ Ah the essays treat 
logically and incisively the subjects chosen by the essayist, and there is a freshness 
and charm about the phraseology that delights the reader.” — Boston T ranscript. 


SOCIAL LIFE AND LITERATURE FIFTY YEARS AGO. i6mo. 

White paper labels, gilt top. $1.00. 

By a well-known litterateur. It will take a high place among the literature 
treating of the period. A quaint and delightful book, exquisitely printed in the 
Pickering style. 

THE SALVATION OF FAUST. By Wm. Leonard Gage. i6mo. 
Paper, 50 cents. Cloth, $1.00. 

“Mr. Gage’s book will doubtless be read where more elaborate treatises would 
be neglected, and it ought to stimulate among Americans a serious interest in a 
poet who has been too long maligned in the popular fancy as the incarnation of 
selfishness and sensuality. — The Beacon." 

BEST HUNDRED BOOKS. The Controversy started by Sir John 
Lubbock, and upheld by Carlyle, John Ruskin, the- Prince of Wales, Mr. 
Gladstone, Max Miiller, etc., which has been shaking England and this country. 
, 50th thousand. Paper, 25 cents. 

YESTERDAY’S WITH ACTORS. By Kate Reignolds Winslow. 
Second edition. Illustrated with phototypes and vignettes. 8vo, paper 
(G. P. Series), 50 cents. Cloth, white and gold, gilt top, $3.50. 

“A book of uncommon interest. Its reminiscences of the actors with 
whom the author has played will bring back many a happy hour to many 
readers, and have the only fault of being too brief. Nearly every actor fa- 
miliar to Boston audiences is spoken of pleasantly, and has an excellent 
portrait in the text. ” — Boston Globe. 


Publishers, 

De Wolfe. Fiske Co. Booksellers. 

Library Agents. 


BOSTON. 


Standard and Popular Books, 


The Popular Heidi Series. 

STORIES FOR CHILDREN AND THOSE WHO LOVE CHILDREN. 
Translated from the German of Johanna Spyri by Louise Brooks. 

HEIDI; Her Years of Wandering and Learning. How She 
Used What She Learned. 2 vols. in one. lamo. Cloth, pp. 668. 
8th edition, with 7 illustrations, and portrait of the Authoress. $1.50. 

The Atlantic Monthly pronounces “Heidi” “a delightful book, charmingly 
told. The book is, as it should be, printed in clear type, well leaded, and is 
bound in excellent taste. Altogether it is one which we suspect will be looked 
back upon a generation hence by people who now read it in their childhood, and 
they will hunt for the old copy to read in it to their children.” 

RICO AND WISELI. “RICO AND STINELLI,” and “HOW 
RICO FOUND A HOME.” lamo. pp. 509. Cloth, $1.50. 

A leading Sunday-school paper further says: “No better books for a Sunday- 
school library have been published for a long time. Scholars of all ages will read 
them with delight. Teachers and parents will share the children’s enjoyment.” 

VERONICA AND OTHER FRIENDS. i2mo. 517 pages. Cloth, 

51.50. 

GRITILI’S CHILDREN. i2mo. 397 pages. Cloth, 5 i -So* 

The steadily increasing sales of these books attest to their extreme popularity 
and value, and it has been truly said that their publication marks an era in the 
history of juvenile literature. Their sweetness, purity, and freedom from any 
sectarian bias, have secured for them a place in the Sunday-school libraries of all 
denominations, and make them as welcome to those having charge of the young as 
they are to the children themselves. 


AROUND THE GOLDEN DEEP. A Romance of the Sierras. 
By A. P. Reeder. 500 pages. i2mo. Cloth. $1.50. 

A novel of incident and adventure, depicting with a strong hand the virile 
life of the mine that gives its name to the story, and contrasting it with the 
more relined touches of society in the larger cities ; well written and inter- 
esting. 

OLD NEW ENGLAND DAYS. A story of true life. By Sophie 
M. Damon. Second edition. i6mo. $1.25. 

“ Reading ‘ Old New England Days’ is like talking with an old lady who 
has long since passed the allotted “three score and ten,” and now delights 
in nothing so much as in recalling the far distant days of her youth.” — Con- 
cord Evenmg Gazette. 

PRIEST AND MAN: Or Abelard and Heloisa. By William 
W iLBERFOKCE Newton. An Historical Romance. In a neat and at- 
tractive binding, witli new dies. Third edition. Illustrated. i2mo. $1.25. 


De Wolfe., Fiske Co. 


Publishers^ 

Booksellers. 

Library Agents. 


BOSTON. 


Standard and Popular Books. 


The Popular Works of Sally Pratt McLean. 

CAPE COD FOLKS. A Novel. Twenty-third edition. Illustrated. 
12010. Cloth, $1.25. Paper, 50 cents. 

TOWHEAD; THE STORY OF A GIRL. Fifth Thousand. i2mo. 
Cloth, $1.25. Paper, 50 cents. 

Since the production of Miss McLean’s first effort “Cape Cod Folks,” she has 
steadily advanced in intellectual development ; the same genius is at work in a 
larger and more artistic manner, until she has at length produced what must be 
truly considered as her masterpiece, and which we have the pleasure to announce 
for immediate publication. 

SOME OTHER FOLKS. A Book in Four Stories. i2mo. Cloth, 1^1.25. 
Paper, 50 cents. 

These books are so well known that further comment seems superfluous. 
Suffice it to say that the entire press of the country has unanimously spoken of 
them in terms of high praise, dwelling not only on their delicious humor, their 
literary workmanship, their genuine pathos, and their real power and eloquence, 
but what has been described as their deep, true humanness, and the inimitable 
manner in which the mirror is held up to nature that all may see reflected therein 
some familiar trait, some description or character which is at once recognized. 

LASTCHANCE JUNCTION; HUMAN NATURE IN THE 
FAR WEST. A Novel. By Sally Pratt McLean, i vol. lamo. 
Cloth, $1.2$. 

“ 1 erse, incisive descriptions of men and scenery, drawn with so vivid a pen 
that one can see the characters and their setting, delicious bits of humor, passages 
full of infinite pathos, make this book absolutely hold the reader from the title to 
the last word, and as, when finished, one sighs for the pity of it, the feeling rises 
that such a work has not been written in vain, and will have its place among those 
which tend to elevate our race.” 


MISS FRANCES MERLEY. A Novel. By John Elliot Curran. 
420 pages. Squ.are i6mo. Paper covers, 50 cents. Cloth, $1.00. 

The first, important work of an author familiar to American readers by 
his remarkable sketches to Scribner^s and other magazines. 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A NEW ENGLAND FARM HOUSE; 

A Romance of the Cape Cod Lands. By N. H. Chamberlain. 3S0 
pages. Square 161110. Paper covers, 50 cents. Cloth, $1.00. 

A novel of singular power and beauty, great originality and rugged force. 
Born and bred on Cape Cod, the author, at the winter firesides of country 
people, very conservative of ancient English customs now gone, heard 
curious talk of kings, Puritan ministers, the war and precedent struggle of 
our Revolution, and touched a race of men and women now passed pvay. 
He also heard, chiefly from ancient women, the traditions of ghosts, witches 
and Indians, as they are preserved, and to a degree believed, by honest 
Christian folk, in the very teeth of modern progress. 


De Wolfe^ Fiske <Sn Co. 


Publishers, 

Booksellers, 

Library Agents. 


BOSTON. 




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